The real reason why we should be scared of a President Erdogan

I was reading Eski Kanka Jim's comment to my post on the weekend results a little while ago in which he said:

"no more mention of the 2nd league (for Ankaragucu) please ! It is not a consideration whilst Kenan Evren is still alive !!!!"

Small history lesson: Kenan Evren became president in 1980 after leading a military coup. He did all all sorts of things but history will record (this blog will no doubt be used by future scholars of Turkish football as THE authorative source) that his true lasting legacy was how one day he thought out aloud "Ankara should have a team in the top division".

Genclerbirligi were down in the 3rd division or somewhere or other while Ankaragucu were in the 2nd division with no hope of being promoted to the top flight but still in contention for the knockout Turkish Cup. Having considered the president's subtle hint, the Turkish Football Federation made a quick change to the rules and decreed that the winner of the Turkish Cup should be promoted...

Anyway, I forgot about Jim's comment for a while and then had a very scary thought. If Recep Tayyip Erdogan becomes president of Turkey forget about the fight over whether his headscarved wife will be allowed to visit her husband at the presidential palace, the true controversy will be that Fenerbahce will automatically win the league for as long as he is in power and we all might as well go and start watching that game for freaks known as basketball.

Back to Ankaragucu. I did a search on google using the words "ankaragucu kenan evren" and found an interesting story (in Turkish only) from the newspaper Bolununsesi (The Voice of Bolu) from last year in which a fellow called Yener Bandakcioglu is talking about refereeing errors and he goes on to talk about what he calls the "biggest refereeing scandal in Boluspor's history".

Yes my good Kankas, you guessed it, it was the 1981 cup final between Ankaragucu and Boluspor.

"It was necessary," Bandakcioglu writes, "that no matter what we did Ankaragucu had to take the cup from Boluspor's hands and (thus be) promoted to the first division".

Ankaragucu at home won the first game in the two-leg playoff 2-1 and then made their way to Bolu for the all important decider. I guess, but I'm not sure, that a 1-0 win to Boluspor in the second match would have resulted in a replay. Nowadays it would result in a win for Boluspor on the away goals rule.

I'll let Bandakcioglu (who is so delightfully biased towards his own team that he would make a good contributor to this blog) take over.

By the way, don't sue me if I make a hash of the translation but I do hope that the true strength of Bandakcioglu's feelings comes through.

"Our football players out on the pitch against Ankaragucu overcame the great stress and atmosphere of the match. The goal we were waiting for came in the 84th minute. From 35 metres out our left wing Minas shot (the ball) like a bullet into the Ankaragucu net with the Ankaragucu keeper Adil in no position to see it. The thousands of Boluspor fans erupted as if they had seen the very light of heaven and the ovations to our goal scorer had begun. But our joy did not last long. The match referee Sadik Deda didn't give the goal."

"In complete obeyance of the order from Kenan Evren, the strong and powerful leader of the revolution, the fooball federation of the time and the notorious referee Sadik Deda brought about this result. We do not know for certain whether those who brought about the result were able to sleep well that night or not. We know just one thing, until the end of the world the small town of Bolu's great club Boluspor will never experience being deprived of such a great victory."

"Me too, as chairman of this great club, I lost (the chance) of my greatest honour... Not in this world but on the Day of Judgement I think it will be right for me to take what I said (I would) from Mr. Kenan Evren."

Powerful stuff. As I said before it certainly makes the idea of the Fenerbahce fanatic Erdogan becoming president a very frightening prospect.