TKP General Secretary Kemal Okuyan's 'Arda Güler' commentary: 'Society has become accustomed to relying on saviors'

TKP General Secretary Kemal OKUYAN

"With so much poverty and problems erupting from every corner of the country, yet another football article?

I hate today's football culture, yet I believe football is a very beautiful game. The hatred I feel grows precisely because I think this way.

I am not so presumptuous as to attempt to share my thoughts on the teams competing in the ongoing European Championship. 

To me, football is a game, a beautiful game. It should be pleasing to the eye, highlight creativity, elevate the sense of justice, and nurture the idea that being a team is more important and advanced than individual efforts. It should suppress selfishness, malicious feelings, and trickery...

The place where capitalism has brought football is far from all of this, but even so, these things I mentioned make themselves felt from time to time, and one feels happy.

Well, in our world, exhausted by tensions and conflicts, everything is political; football is too... It is perfectly natural to feel sympathy for some teams and be annoyed by others. There are very few leftists in this world who do not feel an affinity for the Argentine National Team. Yet, there is exploitation there too; the country's history is, in a sense, a history of coups, juntas, and massacres...

As for me, as I said, I enjoy watching teams that, for better or worse, keep the values I mentioned alive. And I live in this country, I am a citizen of this country, and I want the National Team to succeed. But in my opinion, representing those values should come before success.

As for the reason why I am writing about this...

I felt sorry for what happened to Arda. In fact, the issue is not limited to the footballer Arda Güler; it goes far beyond him.

Some might think I am hung up on Arda starting on the bench in the national team's match against Portugal and entering the game in the middle of the second half; I have no such concern, there is likely a reason for it.

What troubles me is that such great missions are loaded onto one person. Just think, we are talking about a 19-year-old. The expectation is so high that even someone with a settled personality and nerves of steel would get flustered. On top of that, you scored a really nice goal in the Georgia match, and millions of people are ordering at least one more just like it from you...

Arda is a good footballer, there is no room for debate there. Moreover, he is not just success-oriented; he is also a joy to watch. But...

The 'but' is this: In the world created around Arda, which is increasingly becoming detached from reality, both Arda and the other footballers playing on the national team are inevitably being crushed.

All of this has roots beyond football. Society has become accustomed to relying on heroes and saviors. Isn't it the same in politics? Although, in a way, the job of superheroes in politics is easier than Arda's. They can always find a group of sycophants for themselves in any situation. Arda, on the other hand, knows well that he will lose his place at the top when he gets tired, fails to score, or makes a bad pass. He constantly feels this pressure.

Anyone who understands a little bit about football could have predicted that it would not be very normal for Turkey to win if they watched Turkey against Georgia and Portugal against Czechia. Of course, this happens in football, and it is a fact that Turkey can sometimes play at a level far above its own average. However, the normal outcome is for Portugal to prevail, and the mission loaded onto Arda is to defeat the normal and do abnormal things. Yet, this is a phenomenon that holds back both Arda and, beyond him, the team.

If on one side of all this lies the habit of leaving things to superheroes in every field, on the other side stands the desire to be liked and glorified in the international arena. 

It is clear that there is an uncontrolled, and in this respect, glaring effort to 'make oneself liked by foreigners' in all such news headlines as 'The British press could not stop praising Arda,' 'The Spanish are talking about Arda,' 'Ancelotti hugged Arda,' and 'Arda and Ronaldo exchanged glances.'

Here, it is the 'foreigners' who set the standards. We must catch their eye, we must be liked. So, when does national pride come into play? When we are not liked!

They say Arda is Turkey's Messi... In the past, nicknames like Maradona, Kempes, and Pele were often given to players in Turkey. Let us think about it: is there praise here, or a deep sense of insecurity?

Aren't the reactions we witnessed due to Arda not getting enough playing time at Real Madrid like this as well? Arda is very talented, and it is very enjoyable to watch him. That is fine, but are there any untalented players at Real Madrid, a company that stands at the pinnacle of a football industry that has become a toy of the market? We are talking about a team that buys whichever player it wants, has immense resources, and graduates so many new players from its Football Academy every year. Arda is good, but everyone at Real Madrid is more than good enough.

When the team's manager, Ancelotti, calls Arda a 'great player,' everything stops, but when he keeps him on the bench, he is called a traitor, a tyrant, an old man who doesn't understand football... I have even come across claims that he is 'hostile to Turks.'

In summary, a very large segment of society in Turkey oscillates between extreme arrogance and an extreme lack of self-confidence, and this makes itself felt in all areas of social life.

Before moving on to those other areas, I want to dispel a possibility of misunderstanding. Creating gods in football, then tearing them down, and persistently highlighting individual talent rather than team play is a general trend, not unique to Turkey. I read a 'serious' article in the British press that cited the Portuguese Ronaldo passing to his teammate Fernandez, who was in a better position during the match against Turkey—a position he could have easily converted into a goal himself—as proof that Ronaldo is past his prime. In other words, it says that if Ronaldo avoids individualism, then he is finished.

He will naturally decline due to his age, but to draw this conclusion from him passing the ball to a teammate so they can score...

This is the ideological siege that shapes the football world. It is, of course, stained by the filth of money.

In Turkey, we can say that other factors are added to this general picture.

It is possible to dwell on the imperial legacy and the subsequent reckless treatment by imperialist countries, but there is no need for that right now.

The only phenomenon that will break the oscillation between excessive arrogance and a lack of self-confidence in Turkish society is for the Turkish public to experience a resurgence rooted in its working-class character. To put it conversely, as long as this state of mind in the social fabric is not broken, it is impossible for the country to be saved. This situation imposes a historical responsibility on the revolutionary struggle to intervene in the ideological sphere.

Being a team, being a collective; this can only be the product of a struggle that targets collective liberation, not individual salvation, when it comes to the masses. Furthermore, as long as people are fed on religious dogma, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism, it is impossible for society not to malfunction in its relations with the 'outside world.' We cannot expect a healthy stance from these ideologies and their derivatives. Secularism, patriotism, public-mindedness, and internationalism will liberate not only Arda and others but the entire society, and will put it at ease in the face of the outside world.

For instance, in a country associated with figures like Nâzım Hikmet or Aziz Nesin rather than the likes of Fatih Terim, people would not act under the pressure of 'oh, if only they would like us,' nor would they chase after adventures that completely invalidate the system of values.

The Gezi Resistance was also very valuable in this respect; it was a great resistance where the people acted like 'the people,' moved together, regained self-confidence, and learned to be a team.

And if we put aside the comparisons made by a few liberals to the 'Arab Spring' or 'Occupy İstanbul,' Gezi was extremely unique. In this sense, it was both local and universal.

This was not a football article. It was not an Arda article either. It was an article that used an international sports organization, to which I gladly dedicated a few hours of my time in recent days, as a vehicle.

What a ruthless world... A social order that pollutes and decays everything has also made a game that is meant to be played and watched resemble itself.

In this sense, the title needs to be changed first: Pity for humanity...

And then, to hold on tighter to the task of changing the world...

News Source: 12punto