They asked the camel, 'Why is your neck crooked?'...

And it replied, 'What part of me is straight!'

This proverb came to mind when the 2024 Summer Olympics, which concluded with a magnificent closing ceremony on Sunday, ended in a major disappointment for Turkey.

For 17 days, we watched the competitions with great excitement, but mostly with our hearts in our mouths.

Let's set aside the eccentric opening and closing ceremonies of the French, but the Olympics were, in the true sense of the word, a sports festival.

We saw how human beings push their physical and mental limits, the power of the sports industry, and its ability to influence the world.

We witnessed how social media rapidly changed the agenda of the Olympics, turning athletes into icons with their hair, makeup, jewelry, manicured nails, false eyelashes, and even their tragic life stories.

We understood that success does not come without hard work, sweat, and belief.

We also had 101 athletes—54 women and 47 men—competing in 18 disciplines in Paris.

Unfortunately, we did not get the result we expected or wanted.

At the end of the games, we had to settle for a total of 8 medals, 3 silver and 5 bronze.

We ranked 64th among the 90 countries that won medals.

When you consider that South Korea, which has half the population of Turkey, finished the Olympics in 7th place with 28 medals, the gravity of our situation becomes clearer.

In short, as the old saying goes, we waited and waited at the television screens, but the gold medal was left for another spring.

Just like in that joke.

Agop had died, prayers were being said in the church, and his wife Mayranuş was crying and lamenting in her own way...

“Oh, oh... He used to ride horses so well, he played football so well, he swam so fast...”

She would sigh and continue.

“He was always first in tennis, he drove so well...”

He did this, he did that... She just wouldn't finish so they could go to the cemetery and bury the deceased.

Finally, someone from the congregation couldn't take it anymore and nudged her, “Mayranuş, is this Agop the Agop we know?”

“Yes, it is him...”

“That's all well and good, but Agop didn't do any of these things.”

Mayranuş sighed, wiped her nose...

“So what,” she said, “at least he had the ambition...”

The people of my country also have the ambition for the Turkish flag to be raised at the Olympics at least a few times.

But it just doesn't happen!

Yet, we had gone to Paris with one of the largest groups of athletes in our history.

We had hope because, just last year, our women's national volleyball team had won the world championship in the Nations League, and our archer Mete Gazoz had become a world and European champion. Our wrestlers and boxers had similar successes.

Unfortunately, except for the 3rd place we took in the team competition, Mete Gazoz could not reach the podium in individual competitions. It was clear that he was under the pressure created by the success that came at a young age. It is understood that he did not receive the professional support that would have allowed him to unburden himself.

Our women volleyball players also remained in 4th place at the Olympics because they could not shake off the fatigue of last year's victory.

Whether Hatice Akbaş, Buse Naz Çakıroğlu, Taha Akgül, Esra Yıldız Kahraman, or Nafia Kuş Aydın could have done better is hard to say.

Perhaps what should be carefully considered here is the silver medal, that is, the Olympic second place, won by İlayda Tarhan and Yusuf Dikeç.

I am not talking about the pose he gave while shooting with his hand in his pocket, which became famous due to social media hype.

What I am referring to is Yusuf Dikeç stating that he had worked tirelessly for 24 years to win this medal.

No one focused on it properly, but Yusuf Dikeç had summarized the secret of success for all athletes in one sentence here.

The people of my country didn't know him until yesterday. Only when he appeared on social media with his hand in his pocket did we all realize that we had such a successful athlete who ranked in the world standings.

So, why did our athletes hang their heads while even athletes from countries with a few million people, whose names we haven't even heard of, were collecting medals?

Let us not think of our sports as separate from the general course of the country.

The issue has economic, social, and political dimensions.

To raise athletes, there must first be a “sports” consciousness. For a country like Turkey, which knows no bird other than the crow and no sport other than football, it is very difficult for this consciousness to form in a short time.

The issue is also closely related to the economy.

Today, the cost of a healthy and balanced diet in Turkey is around 700 TL per day. The hunger threshold for a family of 4 is 19 thousand TL, and the poverty threshold is 65 thousand TL.

The answer to the question of how you will raise athletes from among the millions living under these conditions remains up in the air. Hospitals are overflowing with children suffering from developmental disorders due to malnutrition.

It would be naive to think that sports will develop in Turkey with the system of Political Islam based on blind obedience, its incompetent staff, and appointments based on cronyism and nepotism.

I'm not even talking about the bigoted crowd that spewed hatred at Ebrar just because of her sexual orientation...

Just as you cannot produce an Olympic champion from gender-segregated pools, as long as the necessary investment is not made in athletics, gymnastics, cycling, handball, sailing, fencing, rowing, table tennis, and judo; but more importantly, as long as the country is not saved from the medieval mentality of political Islamists; as long as freedoms are not restored, the hopes of the youth are not revived, the people of my country do not reach a level of prosperity where they can look to the future with confidence, and reason and science do not prevail in every field of life, we will wait a long time for any significant success at the Olympics, and with that, let us put a period to our article.