009 - Play Ball
World Cup Season is upon us once again and here at Gündem, one half of our mighty team of two, is waking up at god-knows what hour to watch the matches while the other half is about as clued in as the unfortunate TRT commentator who mixed up Iran and New Zealand.
During the 1986 World Cup, Amal militiamen paused fighting during the "War of the Camps" to watch Morocco play Portugal on a portable television, captured on film by Lebanese photojournalist Nabil Ismail
While I find watching 22 men chase after a ball a tad boring, I am fascinated by all that "the glorious game" can and does signify. Take southern Lebanon; armed violence broke out - not because of maurading IDF soldiers or Hezbollah running amok - but because locals supporting Brazil started fighting amongst themselves during the Brazil – Japan match.
Everyone has a team. Supposedly, Osama bin Laden was an Arsenal fan. The source for this was a rather dubious and sensationalist biography published no more than two months after the attacks in 2001. Regardless whether it was fact or fodder to get on the New York Times Best Seller list, in the early 2000s, it was possible to hear "Osama, woah-woah, Osama, woah-woah, he's hiding in Kabul, he loves the Arsenul" chanted by a crowd of half-pissed (as in drunk, dear Americans) Brits. Arsenal fans have a very specific sense of humour; one of their most prominent fanclub site was called "Arseweb". Now, whether or not Osama was really a Gooner (calm down Americans, long before you co-opted the word to mean someone wanking themselves into an early grave, Arsenal fans were using it since the mid-1930s to refer to themselves), its without doubt that he must've supported a football team. The PKK's very own Abdullah Öcalan is a known Galatasaray supporter.
Football overcomes economic class distinctions; it can be played in a state of the art stadium or on barren dirt with nothing more than two stones to mark the goal posts. All you need is a ball. You can't do that with accoutrement-laden sports like tennis or polo. Perhaps one demand that football makes is the need for space. And this is what marks out the urban-rural divide. A basketball needs tarmac or concrete to bounce, its area of play is more compact. Better for cramped cities where space is a luxury few can afford.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took the field in 2014 during the exhibition match held at the opening of the Fatih Terim Stadium in Istanbul.
The choice of a one sport over another is always revealing. Let's take Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. An avid football fan. In fact in a far off parallel universe (providing you subscribe to the theory of Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics), Erdoğan doubled-down on his semi-professional time at Kasımpaşa Spor, eventually getting scouted and picked up by Fenerbahçe and then went on to have a very illustrious international career as a striker who coached the Turkish national team during his retirement. But we live in this universe, and these days we see Erdoğan on the basketball court rather than on the football pitch.
Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa at the official reopening ceremony of Damascus's renovated Al-Fayhaa Sports Hall on April 20, 2026.
Basketball, due to its need for an urban setting, is coded as a middle class sport in Turkey. The same is true for neighbouring Syria too. Our very own Mr. Charm El Sheikh is very keen on shooting hoops. He even played basketball with some CENTCOM commanders last year. Another unlikely basketball addict is none other than our favourite authoritarian girl-dad, Kim Jong Un. Sadly we are unable to find any credible footage of him playing but here he is with his good friend and basketball legend Dennis Rodman, in Pyongyang, during one of Mr. Rodman's visits.
Dennis Rodman presenting a basketball to Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un during one of his five trips to the DPRK between 2013 and 2017.
There’s “playing ball” and then there’s playing ball. Football tends to require a fair amount of running; basketball can be more leisurely. President Obama played a basketball game a month during his first term but switched over to favour golf during his second term as he gently aged into his mid-50s. Because he actually played ball; he once had to get 12 stitches after getting elbowed in the face during a game. What’s that saying – imitation is the greatest form of flattery? Perhaps soon we’ll see certain leaders working on their short game, much to President Trump’s probable delight.