Although there are 18 football clubs in the Turkish top-tier football league, the game is dominated by Istanbul's ‘Big Three’ clubs, Galatasaray, Besiktas, and Fenerbahce.
Like the story of David and Goliath, a small team from a city on the coast of the Black Sea rose and fought the giants equally.
Main Stand will present you with the story of Trabzonspor.
The Istanbul challenger
With over 750,000 square kilometers spanning Europe and Asia, the economic drive of Turkey is still driven solely by Istanbul.
The same dominance applies to a country's football. Since the start of the professional league in 1959, the championships have been won by teams from Istanbul over 61 times, only seven times that other teams triumphed.
"Galatasaray, Besiktas, and Fenerbahce were so big that nobody could battle with them. So the championship was always decided between them," Yakup, a Turkish football fan, told Copa90.
"The three Istanbul clubs …They had this hegemony, this kind of dominance over the Turkish league, and they presented it as if it was common sense as if it was a natural cause of life," he added.
"They could buy anyone's players, and they could match fix, the refs would defend them … It is like they could do anything."
However, in the 1970s, Trabzonspor was formed by the working class in Trabzon. This team fought against the Istanbul teams and won the championships six times from 1975-1984.
“Trabzonspor came in and broke… no, destroy that hegemony,” Jan S, a Trabzonspor fan explained to Copa90. "That's our character. It's a David vs Goliath thing."
Winning made teams from Istanbul hate them but also gained so many fans outside the region.
Black Sea Storm in Turkey
"They do not like us because we dared to not only question but destroy their dominance over the Turkish league football," Jan S. told Copa90.
Despite being a small team, Trabzon's football club became the only side capable of taking on the Istanbul footballing giants, earning them the nickname "Black Sea Storm."
From 1970-1984 if Istanbul clubs came and achieved just a draw, that was also a success. Overmore, Trabzonspor has also inspired football fans who do not live in Istanbul as a symbol of revolution against the central, which gained fan bases across the country.
One fan in that category is Aygen, who was born and raised in Ankara. "I've always been supporting Trabzonspor. I have no connection to the Black Sea, but I guess it's my protest vote against the status quo, standing against the tide.
Everybody around me was supporting the big Istanbul teams and I felt like I had to stand up," Aygen said in the Once In a Lifetime from Copa90 documentary.
Yakup admitted that Trabzonspor fans are known for having a short fuse. Additionally, they also have an identity of being audacious, relentless, and stubborn, making them seem radical to outsiders.
"(It is a) Trabzon's character, I'm not talking about the club, I'm talking about the people, that character is quite a strong thing, There is this culture of what they called 'Delikanli' (or) it would translate as 'crazy blood'," Jan S. added.
Jan also said that the reason might be because of the weather. Beneath them is the sea, and above them are the mountains. They are all exposed to the drafts of wind.
"There are a lot of mountains, a lot of fog. It rains all year, (and) if it's not raining, it's foggy. So it does affect how people are, or their character," Jan S. explained.
"We get (really) angry, (really) quickly, but that's because we're so passionate about it. So we use it in our extreme ways."
That said, there are more to their extreme.
Extreme ways toward their local values
Their extreme ways are seen in every local passion, ranging from their seafood and honey to their hazelnuts. They are so passionate about the nuts that they put them in their Coca-Cola.
The people of Trabzon also like the number 61, their city's unique postal code. Many people are willing to pay more to have the number 61 on the front or back of their mobile number. Some stores even changed their establishment year from 1959 to 1961 to have this number.
"In this town, number 61 is like an ID. It is our identity," Ahmet Firidin, a local journalist, added.
"Some other people find this strange, but Trabzon, we are in a different kind of city."
Moreover, the number 61 is also the number that people in Trabzon most used as their PIN, making the number one and six noticeably more faded than the others.
"They took a picture of an ATM. The numbers were all there, but the number one and six were all faded because everyone's PIN is something with 61," Jan S. told Copa90.
"So the bank has to put a note there that says: For your security, we recommend that you do not include your Trabzon passion in your password and use a different number."
That said, the main thing that the people of Trabzon are proud of is Trabzonspor. The city's football club has made their color of claret and blue spread throughout every corner of Trabzon from the streets, the shops to even bars.
"Bordo Mavi (claret and blue) is the essence of the club so that you will see the colors everywhere, " Jan S. added.
But their happiness had been frozen in the 1980s.
The stolen success of Trabzonspor
Trabzonspor had reigned the throne of the Turkish league only until the middle of the 1980s, when they lost their best players to the team that could offer more.
That same decade, the city lost much of its population, who had to struggle and find their fortune somewhere out of Trabzon from big cities like Istanbul or even foreign countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, or France.
That's the reason why Trabzonspor's fans spread throughout Europe. They are the team with the most fans worldwide, compared to other teams from Turkey. That has led to their club slogan, Bize Her Yer Trabzon, meaning everywhere is Trabzon for us, Trabzon is everywhere, and everywhere is Trabzon.
By the mid-90s, Trabzonspor had somehow scraped back to fighting for the top spot. In 95/96, they fought back until they could lead and dominate the league. However, to their disappointment, they lost the last match of the season.
"I think there were three or four fans who committed suicide," Aygen recalled on the dark period.
Afterward, they went close to the championship again in the 2004/05 season, where Trabzonspor was only three points behind the eventual champion Fenerbahce.
But there would be no season as painful as the 2010/11 season when they lost the league to Fenerbahce with four goals difference.
However, that was not why they still hold a grudge to date. Two months after the championship match, Aziz Yildirim, president of Fenerbahce, was accused of match-fixing with videos and tapes as clear evidence.
This scandal caused UEFA to ban Fenerbahce from all European competitions and sent Trabzonspor to the Champions League instead.
However, the Turkish government stated that since the evidence was obtained illegally, all the charges were dropped, declaring Fenerbahce still a champion.
"We felt robbed and insulted because there was no justice afterwards," Jan S. said.
This season came to be known as the "stolen season" for the Trabzonspor's fans and it was the beginning of their fight against injustice in their way.
The rebels of Turkish football
After the scandalous season, Trabzonspor's rivalry against Istanbul teams intensified, becoming a chaotic decade for them.
In October 2015, they became the worldwide news after Ibrahim Hacıosmanoğlu, Trabzonspor's president, locked the referees in the locker room after they didn't give a penalty kick to them in a 2-2 draw game between them and Gaziantepspor.
Things were so bad that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had to negotiate the release of the referees. Then, the Turkish FA banned Hacıosmanoğlu.
In February 2016, Trabzonspor player Salih Dursun was sent off after showing dissent to the referee by picking up and brandishing his red card, moments after his teammate Luis Cavanda was dismissed.
The incident left Trabzonspor with just seven players on the pitch, yet Galatasaray still required a last-minute Selcuk Inan penalty to snatch a 2-1 victory.
Although the team lost, the town praised Dursun's action the day they returned to Trabzon. People were waiting for them with red cards in their hands and said to him: ‘Trabzon is proud of you’.
"He was representing the reaction of the city, and also he stood against this unfair treatment of our city," Ahmet Metin Genc, head of the municipality, told.
Every match between Trabzonspor and Istanbul teams was full of violence and chaos, and some games did not even last to the final whistle.
According to some fans, their reaction is akin to being robbed in one's home, and it's a mixture of anger, rage, and profound sadness.
Bouncing back from negativity
After a bitter decade, Trabzonspor has their chance again in the season 2021-22 after consecutively winning 15 matches and leading the league until their thirty-fifth game.
Although Trabzonspor only needed a draw to win the title, it was not an easy job in their final match against mid-table Antalyaspor.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a lot of people. So, we're going to experience it to the fullest," Yakup told Copa90.
Towards the end, some fans thought the game was over and charged onto the field to celebrate. Unfortunately, this happened during the 93 minutes, and their actions could suspend the game, resulting in the possibility of Trabzonspor losing points.
Luckily, fans cleared out eventually, and the game continued for the referee to blow the whistle just a few seconds later, awarding Trabzonspor the Turkish league title after 38 years.
From dirt, grass and net, fans in the stadium tried to get pieces from the field as memorabilia.
Trabzonspor proved that they could succeed with fewer resources. They could represent diversity to the world and mean something that's not a part of the elitists, showing the game's beauty.
"The fact that the team that is not part of the establishment, that is basically winning it with less resources, that's a more beautiful story in my eyes," Jan S. conveyed to Copa90.
"I think it's vital that people take (an) interest in other teams, not just the big team, of course…. We want diversity, (and) we want new teams, we want new stories, we want new cities."
This article is not just the story of a football team but also the story of the city of Trabzon. It is also a story about its people and how their lives intertwine with their football team.
This is Trabzonspor.
References
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211220-unfancied-trabzonspor-take-turkish-football-by-storm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MIVFzQ59HA
https://sport.optus.com.au/articles/os42668/turkey-football-super-lig-trabzonspor-champions-marek-hamsik-winners
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/sports/soccer/trabzonspor-turkey-super-lig.html
https://www.thesportsman.com/articles/how-trabzonspor-disrupted-the-turkish-elite-11-years-after-their-title-was-stolen
https://www.rt.com/sport/554909-trabzonspor-fans-celebrations-champions/
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/life/passionate-turkish-football-fan-sets-up-museum-in-house/1663865
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/european/trabzonspor-player-salih-dursun-sent-off-for-showing-red-card-to-referee-a6888671.html
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2584435-trabzonspor-boss-locks-referee-in-stadium-until-4am-for-refusing-to-give-penalty
