Ankaragucu!! (pron. "Ankaragoojoo")

On Sunday, I went down into Ankara with one of my students (Seccad; he looks like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but is about a million times nicer) to see a football (real football) match between one of Ankara's four Turkish league teams, Ankaragucu, and Sivassport. Once we took the bus into town, the first thing we did was find the park where Seccad's brother works as a security guard...so that his brother could take Seccad's three and five-team teaser bets on this weekend's matches. Nothing like seeing a uniformed guard make change in the middle of his shift to remind you you're not in Maine anymore.

Next, we met up with Seccad's classmate, Osman, in the Kizilay district and found the gathering of Ankaragucu fans in the street there. Everyone was chanting ("ole oleoleoleole" and all that) and waving huge flags. At one point a fight broke out between a couple of the supporters and the "captain" of the fans (yes, they have a captain, more on him later) went over to help break things up. Then a guy went around handing out sparklers for us all to light, and if everyone wasn't already jumping around like their hair was on fire, making the metaphor literal certainly helped. (For those of you keeping track at home, so far we've had mass dancing and singing, with pyrotechnics, and this is BEFORE we started moving toward the stadium; it was a tiring day.)

Marching down the streets of Kizilay, and then through the main avenues leading to the Ulus district where the stadium is, the chanting and singing was joined by derogatory taunting of random opponents' owners and managers, as well as a confident disregard for traffic regulations. It was the first time since the protest at Textron that I have marched through the streets with a throng of people (no one got left behind and arrested this time, that I know of), and it was a similar energy. I think the difference between a political protest and a sports rally really boils down to the protest being cheaper to attend, but with the knowledge your team will certainly lose. So I guess the message to Cubs fans is.... (too early for Cubbies jokes? ok, too early).

Fast-forward two miles to the stadium: meat vendors all over the parking lot (though less so I expect than normal because we are nearing the end of Ramadan), brigades of police making formation outside the entrance gates, enough yellow and blue (Ankaragucu's colors) to satisfy an art teacher. Once inside (Seccad had promised the use of one of his season tickets, but we couldn't find his friend who had them there so he bought us each tickets for about $4 a pop), I discovered that part of the reason those suckers were so cheap is that you weren't paying for a SEAT so much as a place to stand and watch the game from. The hard pieces of plastic with numbers on them were so dirty and grimy that most people just perched on their backs until the match started (we were there an hour early, so half-way through I caved and sat down).

About ten or fifteen minutes before the match started, our fearless leader came angrily (he did everything angrily as far as I could tell, except kiss his friend on the cheek after match) marching along the inside of the fence separating the fans from the field and demanded one of the personnel to open the gate so he could climb up and direct our cheers. He stood next to a couple kids with huge drums (even for percussionists they were not particularly gifted musicians) and began orchestrating wildly our collective reactions to the announcements of the starting lineups. This part was basically hiss and whistle as loud as you can at the opposing team (my eardrums still hurt from that part) and chant things about the greatness of Ankaragucu while we take the field. I even missed the opening kick-off because I was trying to decipher this guy's hand gestures in relation where exactly I was supposed to be waving and chanting at the moment.

In fact, the action definitely took an overall backseat to the cheering for most of the match. It seemed that at any given moment, we were either shouting at one of the other groups of fans (there were actually two or three other sections like ours on either side of the field, ours being behind one of the nets) or inwardly focused on keeping time with the drummers and joining in the most recently begun jeers. The only times this was interrupted by action on the field was for injuries (booing the immoral fakers on Sivassport and cheering the fallen, heroic comrades of Ankaragucu) and goals (I was really impressed at the way the fans rallied around the home cause after they gave up a goal).

Did I mention that personal space is not a big thing here? Our section of the stadium resembled a mosh pit much more closely than any crowd of fans I have recently witnessed. The first few times that someone from behind put their full weight on my shoulder to stay standing during a chant that involved everyone jumping up and down in time it freaked me out, but I got comfortable very quickly with bracing myself against Seccad and the people in front of me. For about thirty-five minutes each half we did the whole jumping-waving-chanting routine and then the captain would call a rest where people went back to perching on their hard plastic chairs. It was not a relaxing spectator event, it was WORK to cheer there. It was thousands of has-been footballers channeling only slightly less energy than they would have used on the field into vocal and choreographic support. At one point in the second half, Seccad looked at me and said "Captain say, now we go down". I thought, we can't be leaving, there's fifteen minutes left! Turns out, he meant the group had decided to have an impromptu fitness test for my knee by combining the collective jumping routine with all moving down several rows of seats at the same time. Then back up. Then to the left and right. I still have no friggin' clue why that happened, but at least I survived with my ACL intact. Let's just say that I have a few more very close friends now than I did Sunday morning. And that "Eau de crazy Turkish football fan" will not be sweeping the world perfume markets any time soon.

As for the match itself, the end was much more thrilling than the beginning. Ankaragucu, despite the deep enthusiasm of its fans went down a goal in the first ten minutes and it was 2-0 at the end of the half, both of them on breakaways. The goalie of course was typically calm and classy about it, shouting at his defenders and pointing vigorously at who the manager should take out. Early in the second half our boys put one in on a header off a free kick a ways to the left of the penalty area, and tied it up a half hour later with another header on a cross from the left. A tie at home may not seem like a great outcome, but Sivassport is second in the league right now, and we were really giving it to them for most of the second half, so nothing to be ashamed of.

ANkara-gu-cu, AnKARa-gu-cu! ANkara-gu-cu, AnKARa-gu-cu!