LETTER FROM ISTANBUL
“How beautiful the victory! », proclaimed the Turks upon the return of the players of the national team who won the Euro 2023 women’s volleyball tournament in Brussels. For the first time in its history, the country had just won a major title in a major international competition. The centenary year of the Republic founded by Mustafa Kemal, what a symbol!
When they got off the plane, Monday, September 4, in Istanbul, the party that the Turkish people reserved for their team sent back the image of a national communion in jubilation with diverse youth, filled with euphoria and joy. to live. Flags and flowers everywhere. The evening before, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent an enthusiastic message on (ex-Twitter) saluting the players’ achievement and taking up the nickname they inherited: “I wholeheartedly congratulate our women’s volleyball team, the “Sultanes du filet”, who have made us all proud. »
Even the New York Times spoke of a “victory that transformed into a rare source of national pride, appealing beyond the country’s social divisions (…)a welcome success for a Turkey struggling with skyrocketing inflation, extreme polarization and a difficult recovery after February’s devastating earthquakes..
However. The demons of politics and morality being never far away in Turkey, the joy only lasted for a while. Harassed for months by groups of religious and ultra-conservative extremists, the team was able to rest one foot on Turkish soil with a cut in its arms, the flood of hateful messages on social networks increased in violence, resuming the offensive as if nothing had happened.
“Contrary to the values of Turkish society”
Main target of these attacks, star player Ebrar Karakurt. For a long time, it was described as “national shame” by Yeni Akit, an Islamo-conservative and pro-government daily, known for its incendiary editorials. The attacker, openly gay, had posted photos on her accounts of herself posing affectionately surrounded by other young women. The newspaper never stopped vilifying “his lifestyle contrary to the values of Turkish society” and to ask, in vain, for his dismissal from the team.
While the player had barely arrived in Istanbul, Ihsan Senocak, a preacher with more than a million subscribers on “the flag carries the blood of all martyrs” and he has nothing to do “on LGBT people”. In 2021, while the volleyball team participated in the Tokyo Summer Olympics, this intractable defender of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the party in power for twenty-one years, had already distinguished himself by criticizing the players for their behavior which, according to him, deviates from the conception of Muslim women. “Daughter of Islam!” You are not the sultana of the playgroundshe tweeted, you are the sultana of faith, chastity, decency and modesty. »
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