“I’m nearly 40 and I’m single,” smiles Begum, a female Galatasaray supporter. “My mother says I need to consider other guys and not do what I do. Because if I meet a handsome guy, then before I ask his name, I ask which team he supports. It happened a few weeks ago. He said ‘Fenerbahce’ and I said, ‘Nice to meet you, goodbye'.”
Begum is well educated, has an excellent job and is a lifelong fan of Galatasaray. She’s in a noisy restaurant ahead of the biggest game in Turkish football: the great Istanbul derby between champions Galatasaray and Fenerbahce, their arch foes from across the Bosphorus strait on the Asian side of a teeming metropolis of 15 million people.
Begum is surrounded by friends with whom she has long watched her team. She wears her lucky home shirt. She’s confident yet nervous about the game ahead. The restaurant, amid the skyscrapers of Istanbul’s banking district, is close to the new Ali Sami Yen Stadium, the modern 53,978-seater home of the record 24-time Turkish champions. Istanbul has undergone vast change. It’s modern, ambitious, hardworking, with football the focus of passions.
There are no Fenerbahce fans to be seen as the Galatasaray fans sing and punch the air in unison. They eat delicious Turkish breads, kebabs and desserts. A child, aged no more than 10, sits on adult shoulders and delights as he leads some chants. This is a bond for life.
The atmosphere is building when live television images show the Fenerbahce team coach making its way through gridlocked roads from Asia to Europe for a Monday night game, under a heavy police escort.
Both teams are giants, both can claim millions of supporters – 30 million for Galatasaray against 22 million for Fenerbahce is one such claim heard and repeated around Istanbul. Both can boast of having one of the best atmospheres in world football when they play at home.
They have big name players – Victor Osimhen and Mauro Icardi play up front for Galatasaray. Fenerbahce feature former Manchester United players Fred and Sofyan Amrabat, while ex-Manchester City striker Edin Dzeko is the captain. They’re managed by one of the biggest names in world football, Jose Mourinho.
The Portuguese arrived at the start of this season to try to win a first title since 2014. Fenerbahce amassed 99 points last season and still finished second, three points behind Galatasaray. Trabzonspor, in third, finished 32 behind. The leading two dominate while Turkey’s third-biggest club, Besiktas, finished sixth. Former Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is now coach at Besiktas and has made an impressive start, but he knows that his side are a long way behind the leading two.
All three Istanbul giants play in modern arenas. Their supporter demographics were drawn in the 1970s. Kurthan Fisek, a leading Turkish academic (and Fenerbahce fan), summarised the differences between Istanbul’s three leading clubs as thus: Galatasaray, he said, were the club of the European aristocracy, Fenerbahce the club of the bourgeoisie, while the city’s third club, Besiktas, were supposed to be the team of the working classes.
Now, the boundaries are blurred. Galatasaray and Besiktas have more fans in the districts which bear their names, Fenerbahce across the water.
But while other major derbies may have ethnic or religious differences or class at their roots, it’s different in Turkey. “Anyone can become a supporter of any club,” explains Galatasaray supporter Umit Erbek. “It’s not drawn along religious or geographic or class or family lines like in other countries. Anyone can support anyone.”
The National had met Umit early on derby day to visit the Galatasaray High School just off the main shopping street of Nevizade, where fans gather in the historic old bars before taking a metro to the stadium four miles to the north. Umit is excited but nervous. He’s confident in his team but knows that Fenerbahce have been in good form. The gap between the pair is six points after 23 games. If Fenerbahce win it's down to three points. Leaders Galatasaray are unbeaten in the league this season. “The rivalry is at its peak,” he says. “This game is crucial.”
Galatasaray was founded by former pupils of one of the best schools in the city in the heart of the European part of Istanbul, a 500-year-old institution built to provide a French-language education for the elites of the Ottoman Empire. It was there, in 1905, that Ali Sami Yen convinced a group of his friends that they should start a football team, presenting them with a ball repaired with leather cut from his own shoes.
“Our aim,” he wrote, “was to play in an organised way like the English do, to have a set of colours and a name, and to beat non-Turkish teams.” Two years later, in the first Istanbul derby, they defeated Fenerbahce 2–0, with one of the goals scored by an English expatriate by the name of Horace Armitage. Armitage was the first of many players who’ve played for both clubs, with changes of allegiance relatively commonplace.
The leading Turkish clubs are rarely, in fact, just football clubs, but go under the broader sobriquet of sports clubs. Besiktas is nominally a gymnastics club. Galatasaray has its own basketball team, an athletics squad, a rowing team, and even a team of equestrians.
And it has even gone back to its educational roots by establishing its very own eponymous university. Fenerbahce’s basketball team is one of the best in Europe and the atmosphere at games can be as intense as football.
The train carriages are packed with the red and yellow of Gala fans singing ‘Cim Bom’, which is how the locals refer to their club. One has a mask similar to that worn by leading striker Osimhen. His former club Napoli told Manchester United they wanted £110 million for him in 2023, yet he ended up in Turkey on loan soon after. The leading Turkish clubs can pay the big wages.
Fans sing about Fenerbahce’s president Ali Koc, one of Turkey’s wealthiest and most influential men. The suggestions are that Fenerbahce may have all the money, but that they can’t win the title. The playing budgets for both clubs are roughly equal. Galatasaray draw crowds of 44,000 in a league where the average is 12,000. Fenerbahce average 36,000 and Besiktas 31,000.
But suspicions and conspiracies flourish among fans, with allegations that rival clubs have links to officials or referees. One fan explains that they only use a certain airline because they think the owner is a Galatasaray fan, another that they only use the car rental company Sixt because they sponsor their club, even though they are more expensive than others. The tribalism is intense and is one reason the game is to be refereed by officials from outside Turkey - in this case Slovenian Slavko Vincic - after both clubs requested a foreign official take charge of the fixture.
“I think it’s important for the credibility, for the image of the match,” said Mourinho.
Galatasaray may be league leaders but they exited European competition last week to Dutch side AZ Alkmaar in the Europa League, while Fenerbahce progressed to the last 16 in the same competition.
Galatasaray’s coach, Okan Buruk, is popular after successive titles, but there’s frustration about their European form. They can beat giants like Manchester United or Tottenham, but lose to much smaller sides. Despite finishing 14th in the Europa League’s new-look 36-team league phase, Galatasaray had the highest 'expected goals' and were top scorers with 19 from eight games, although they also conceded 16.
More than one fan says that their focus is the domestic league because their squad isn’t strong enough to compete on two fronts, but there’s frustration with the comments since they also say that some of their greatest moments have come in Europe in recent years.
The security operation is significant with six different checks before taking a seat. Headphones, lighters and water bottles are confiscated from fans and thrown into large bins. Passports are shown to prove identity and tempers fray as people push to get their match tickets. It can cost as little as $600 for a season ticket behind the goal at Galatasaray, yet a one-off ticket for the derby can cost the same in a top seat.
Two lines of police protect the pitch, while Fenerbahce’s players are booed by all but the 2,500 travelling supporters when they take the field. The away fans are packed into the top tier behind high fences and a huge flag which says: "Put your heart, show your anger." Below is a rival 30-metre-long flag which reads: "Istanbul is a palace and the only owner is Galatasaray."
The stadium is an all-seater, yet everyone stands, even in the VIP seats. It might not be as raucous as the old Ali Sami Yen stadium which Galatasaray departed in 2011, but nor is Istanbul. Yet it still makes most English Premier League stadiums seem like a library by comparison.
The air is thick with cigarette smoke, anxiety and tension, which is released when fans scream for their team. Or for the injured striker Icardi when he walks into the centre of the field 15 minutes before kick off. The Argentine, whose private life is more colourful than his hair, is a hero and rouses the fans, jumping up and down to get them even more up for the game.
He smiles throughout; like many of the big-name foreign footballers who land in Istanbul they feel loved and respected. Another hero is former manager Graeme Souness, who infamously planted a Galatasaray flag in the centre circle of Fenerbahce’s pitch in 1996.
“I go back to Istanbul at least once a year, it’s a great city,” Souness told The National. “London on steroids. It’s such a buzz with an unbelievable history. For a long time it was the centre of the world. I’d fully recommend for players to go there. If you want to play for a big football club then the price to pay is the passion of the supporters. That’s the case with Galatasaray.”
The noise is immense. Everyone related to Fenerbahce is booed and Mourinho is conspicuous by his absence – or maybe wisely waiting in the shadows.
The Turkish national anthem is played and the stadium roars. Lines of police stare into the stands and the game starts. It’s competitive, physical and tight from the start.
Fenerbahce are not intimidated, with Fred industrious in the middle. Fouls are disputed, while seven yellow cards are shown, five to Galatasaray, whose coach and former player Buruk is most animated throughout the game. Mourinho, a wily big-game master, shoots him withering looks.
In one moment, an object is thrown from the stands towards the Fenerbahce bench. A coach picks it up, shows an official and puts it in his pocket.
The tension increases in the second period. Fans pull hard on cigarettes. Six flares are lit in the away section, with three of them thrown down towards the pitch and into the Galatasaray fans huddled in the tier below. It’s dangerous and the home fans howl in derision.
Fenerbahce push for a late winner, the home side commit some cynical challenges and Mourinho fumes, but the game ends goalless. Mourinho is escorted down the tunnel, before he faces the media.
“I have to thank the referee,” he says, playing mind games to wear down a superior opponent, as he did with Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola when at Real Madrid in 2011/12.
“After the big dive in the first minute and their bench jumping like monkeys on the top of the kid [defender Yusuf Akcicek] … with a Turkish referee you would have a yellow card after one minute, and after five minutes I would have to change him.
“I went to the referee’s dressing room after the game, of course the fourth official was there, a Turkish referee. I told him, ‘Thank you for coming here, you come for a big match’, and I turned myself to the fourth official and I said, ‘If you were a referee this match would be a disaster’.”
Not for the first time it would be Mourinho’s words that made the headlines. He was banned and fined earlier this season for condemning refereeing standards in Turkey. Many Fenerbahce fans would agree with him and before Monday’s game he’d welcomed the decision to use a foreign official after previously describing the environment in the country as "toxic".
Galatasaray were furious and released a statement: “Since the commencement of his managerial duties in Turkey, Fenerbahce manager Jose Mourinho has persistently issued derogatory statements directed towards the Turkish people. Today, his discourse has escalated beyond merely immoral comments into unequivocally inhumane rhetoric.
“We hereby formally declare our intention to initiate criminal proceedings concerning the racist statements made by Jose Mourinho, and shall accordingly submit official complaints to Uefa and Fifa. Furthermore, we shall diligently observe the stance adopted by Fenerbahce – an institution professing to uphold ‘exemplary moral values’ – in response to the reprehensible conduct exhibited by their manager.”
Fenerbahce fought back in defence of their coach, releasing their own statement. “As every sensible person can see and understand; these statements used by Jose Mourinho to describe the excessive reaction of the opposing team’s technical staff to the referee decisions during the match can in no way be associated with racism," it read.
“Trying to portray this statement as racist is a completely malicious approach. We would like to inform the public that we will use our legal rights regarding this pathetic slander that was made in order to take the competition off the field, change the agenda and manipulate it.”
After all was said and done, Galatasaray maintained their six-point lead and are favourites to lift the title.
The fans flooded back into the metro, heading home or for kebabs amid the midnight buzz of Taksim Square. “A poor game,” says Umit. “But nobody lost tonight.”
