The Costs of Türkiye's Fetishism of Men's Football

The Turkish men’s football team defeated the United States 3-2 in the recent world cup match, despite their elimination from the World Cup. According to Reuters, Türkiye head coach Vincenzo Montella said the team could “go back home with [its] chin up,” adding that although “football hurts,” the performance against the US meant more to him than “1,000 victories.” Are these remarks as innocuous as they appear, or do they reveal the underlying controversies of Turkish sporting system?

Türkiye’s World Cup campaign was accompanied by exceptional rewards and privileges for the men’s national football team. Players were reportedly promised luxury villas and additional cash bonuses if they qualified for the tournament. The team’s departure featured a convoy of flag-covered national Togg vehicles, a band, government officials, and promotional language linking football success to national unity and Türkiye’s international standing.

A World Cup anthem commissioned by the Turkish President Erdoğan’s instructions declared, “All of you against us– We are Türkiye!” The squad traveled to the United States on a specially chartered Turkish Airlines Boeing 777. The team was initially prepared at the TFF’s Riva complex, stayed in Miami before its final friendly match, and then established its tournament base in Mesa, Arizona. The squad used a hotel and three pitches at the Arizona Athletic Grounds.

Türkiye, alongside Haiti, was one of the two teams eliminated first from the tournament after losing its two opening matches without scoring, falling 2-0 to Australia and 1-0 to Paraguay. But the national attitude towards the football teams after the unforunate losses striked vast difference.

Haiti, drew almost its entire squad from the diaspora, with players travelling on regular commercial flights from their respective club countries before assembling in Florida. Haiti lost 1-0 to Scotland and 3-0 to Brazil after qualifying amid the collapse of much of its domestic football system. Armed gangs controlled large parts of Port-au-Prince, forcing them to play every World Cup qualifier abroad. The country’s national stadium was occupied and vandalized, the domestic league was repeatedly suspended, and only one member of the 26-player team played for a Haitian club; most of the team had instead been developed through foreign national football systems.

In recent years, world champions, Olympic champions, European champions, and world-record holders, all of whom represent Türkiye across multiple disciplines, have publicly described sponsorship shortages and funding difficulties. Men’s football, by contrast, remains the dominant recipient of public attention and the state’s resources regardless of results.

In 2023, the Turkish Women’s National Volleyball Team became champions of the FIVB Volleyball Nations League, the European Championship, and rose to No. 1 in the FIVB world rankings. Less than a year later, in May 2024, members of the world’s statistically best volleyball team at the time, were seated in economy class for a 13-hour transatlantic flight to the United States for their next Volleyball Nations League.

In September 2023, after winning the European Championship, the women’s volleyball team reportedly traveled to Japan for Olympic qualifiers on a scheduled connecting flight, while the men’s national football team traveled the next day from Eskişehir to the Netherlands on a private aircraft for a friendly against Japan. The same reports note that the men’s team had also used a private aircraft for domestic travel that took about 30 minutes to Eskişehir ahead of its 2024 Euro qualifier against Armenia.

Turkish Airlines organized a surprise celebration on board the flight for the Women's National Volleyball Team, after they secured their place in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

The contrast remains the same for individual sportsmen competing for Türkiye. Turkish freediver Derya Can has set multiple world and national records throughout her career, including deep-diving world records in 2013, 2014, and 2016; a 120-metre under-ice Guinness World Record in 2017; and a 70-metre freshwater world record in Selda Lake in 2019. Can took out a bank loan after failing to secure sponsorship for the international application fee, training, and operational costs of a 2018 world-record attempt at Selda Lake.

On the other hand, Turkish freediver Fatma Uruk set three world records in three days in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula in November 2020, reaching 72 and then 77 metres in variable-weight no-fins and 67 metres in constant-weight bi-fins. Uruk, while employed at a bank and using leave from work, stated that financial difficulties and the inability to secure sponsorship repeatedly delayed her record attempts.

Turkish wrestler Yasemin Adar Yiğit won bronze in the women’s 76 kg category in the Tokyo 2020 Games, securing Türkiye’s first Olympic medal in women’s wrestling. Buse Tosun Çavuşoğlu became the women’s 68 kg wrestling world champion in 2023, while İrem Yaman won world taekwondo titles in 2015 and 2019, becoming the first Turkish woman to win the championship twice.

According to Independent Türkçe, İrem Yaman said that although the state supported different sports, assistance and public attention remained concentrated on men’s football, leaving amateur disciplines without the recognition they deserved. In an interview with Socrates, Yasemin Adar Yiğit said women wrestlers faced criticism that Türkiye’s traditional sport was unsuitable for women and noted that the public remembered the marriage proposal she received on the mat more readily than her world championship.

Numerous Turkish women, including but not limited to those discussed above, had already won world records, Olympic titles, world championships, and three consecutive Paralympic gold medals. Their accounts instead concerned loans, family financing, insufficient sponsorship, economy-class travel, and cancelled celebrations.

The Ministry of Youth and Sports’ own 2024-2028 strategic plan lists outdated sponsorship rules, sports operating without federations, and shortages of accessible facilities, equipment, and trained staff for disabled athletes among the problems still awaiting resolution. Its 2026 performance program estimated that only 600 coaches would have been trained to work with disabled athletes by the end of 2025, against the 5,500 originally planned.

The picture thus reveals a system that has yet to provide an institutionally dependable route from schools and local clubs to elite competition. Addressing this gap requires reconsideration of the scale of resources and coverage directed toward men’s football and allocating public funding more closely in line with measurable performance, participation, development needs, and international results across different sports.

Edited by: Cemre Sanlav