A plea, no doubt to be lost

Last week I had of a go at Atilla Turker, a writer for Hurriyet's Ankara section, who clearly got it wrong in regards to blaming Gencler players for getting sent off.

Last week Turker clearly didn't have a clue what the hell he was talking about but this week he is spot on.

Let me give you a bit (or actually quite a lot) of background. Atilla Turker seems to be in charge of the Hurriyet newspaper's Ankara supplement sports section. In other words, we are probably the only blog, in Turkish or English, who ever looks at his work.

So Turker is very much like us. He works very hard, he has a true passion for Ankara teams, but most of his work is wasted because nobody gives a shit.

Except for us Atilla Bey! We read your articles every day! We may not always agree but we are very grateful that someone writes something about our teams.

Enough of the Atilla Turker worship.

As I said last week he wrote complete rubbish, and on to this week's subject... politics at Gencler.

"Cavcav is doing the wrong thing", was the very understated headline in Thursday's Ankara supplement, hidden down the bottom of page.

Atilla Turker talks about the latest developments at the club where Gencler Chairman Ilhan Cavcav has moved to have various "enemies" expelled.

A little history lesson. Just before the last matches of last season, Gencler needed a win to or two get us into the UEFA Cup. For whatever reason Cavcav sacked our general manager, Hasan Cetinkaya, and didn't tell the coach Mesut Bakkal. Cetinkaya was an important bloke. He spoke English and had a good rapport with the foreign players and the fans (not to mention the fact that he was a good friend of Zagreb Kanka).

In his place Cavcav brought in a mate of his who couldn't speak English and therefore our team would have been breaking UEFA rules... ie the general manager should speak English (the rules are somehow like this but please do not sue if they are not).

Bakkal, our coach, was furious when he found out about the changes from members of the team. One of the board members, Atilla Aytek was also very pissed off when he only learnt of the changes from the Bakkal. In other words, there had been no board decision on the issue, as there should have been.

So Aytek, along with a bunch of other long-serving Gencler supporters decided to stand against Cavcav.

The election was held on the morning of the last match of the season. Gencler had to win to get into the UEFA Cup.

At the election in the morning around 1,000 people voted for Aytek. Around 5,000 voted for Cavcav. A clear victory. Except that Cavcav had enrolled almost all of his suporters in the week before the election. We now have the ignomy of having a former Young Galatasaray Supporters Chairman on our board. All the people who Cavcav signed up were Galasaray supporters. Of course he offered them free season tickets and many of them took up the opportunity to watch our last home game of the season.

As I said before, the last game of last year saw us needing a win to make it into the UEFA Cup. I was sitting in Gecekondu and I was depressed as hell as we lost the match and lost the chance to be in Europe. It was clear that many of the supporters who were sitting in Maraton were also depressed but I was extremely pissed off with so many of the Gecekondu people who were actually happy because at the same time as we had lost Galatsaray had won the league.

These people were Cavcav's supporters. They were brought in to support him but they have no, absolutely no, allegiance to Gencler. I left the ground that night totally devastated, they left it delighted. These were the people who just a week or so before hand had become members of the Genclerbirligi club and voted for Cavcav.

In other words Cavcav, as chairman, had completely rattled the teamin the build up to the match and that is why we stuffed up. No one knew what was going on and whose brilliant idea was it to have the general congress on the morning of the last match of the season?

Now back to Atilla Turker in Hurriyet (and quite frankly his article is a lot shorter than this post).

Turker sets out the situation, in not quite as much detail as I have above, but does say that the Aytek faction (those opposed to Cavcav) have gone to court to try to have all of the Galatasaray-lovers kicked out. The arguement is not quite like that but more along the lines that all of these people became members of the club in the last week before the election for chairman and therefore should not be allowed to vote.

Sounds like a clear case of illegal stacking to me and Gencler Chairman Ilhan Cavcav seems to agree as he has decided to go for a pre-emptive strike.

As was reported in the Turkish press, and repeated by Atilla Turker, Cavcav has moved to have Atilla Aytek and his suporters kicked out of the club by sending them to the sinisterly named "disciplinary board". This board is to meet on December 12 and is almost certainly going to see a bunch of people who have given years and years of their life kicked out of the club they love.

So what.

Except that the courts, that is the Turkish courts, are scheduled to decide on December 14 whether Cavcav's rorting of the system was right or wrong.

With all assumptions being that the court will rule that Cavcav had rigged the election then the elections will have to be held again. Only hassle is that Aytek and his friends will by all probabililty have already been kicked out of the club at that stage and therefore won't be able to run against Cavcav.

"This is the method of Turkish democracy," Turker says in his article in today's Hurriyet.

So we are stuffed. A long time ago Ahmet Bey from the site "Turkish soccer" asked where I stood on this matter. At the time I was perhaps a little guarded. I hope it is now clear.

It is without a doubt that Cavcav has done a billion great things not just for Genclerbirligi but also for Turkish football in general (If you doubt that statement just ask any slightly intelligent taxi driver).... but,

Today is the time to ask the question whether he has lost it. My answer is: "Completely".

Time to retire Mr. Cavcav. You've lost it.