Teksas wants to be seen as more than 'Wild West'

Texas may recall memories of the Wild West, but Turkish Teksas does not want to be synonymous with violence anymore.

The notorious fan group of the Turkish football league team Bursaspor, which calls itself Teksas, has been the subject of massive media coverage in the last two months. First, the group was held responsible for crowd trouble in a Turkcell Super League game against Diyarbakırspor last month. Soon after, however, its reputation improved somewhat after the respectful stance it took during the Turkish national team’s politically loaded football match against Armenia on Oct. 14.

Teksas has been called the enfant terrible of Turkish football after the Bursaspor-Diyarbakırspor game, which was marred by fights between fan groups accompanied with hateful chants.

Many ultra-nationalists in Turkey consider Diyarbakırspor, from the biggest city in southeastern Turkey, as a representative of the Kurds and, by extension, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

After the game, daily Radikal columnist Tanıl Bora blamed Bursaspor supporters for being “aggressive, discriminatory and racist” during the game.

However, some members of Teksas’ Web site Teksas.org believe that the fan group was victimized during a process when Turkey was starting to discuss the Kurdish initiative.

“I was in the stands that day. When we were singing our national anthem, Diyarbakırspor fans started to protest, and that was how the events began. We are all citizens of this country,” said Erkan Seymenler before adding a common right-wing nationalist mantra, “You should either love the values of this country or leave it.”

Another Teksas.org member Soner Taş added: “We’ve had games against Diyarbakırspor before, and there were no troubles. In that game, the Diyarbakırspor chairman knew the Kurdish initiative was on the agenda and played the victim role.

“Then the media took over and it looked like it was completely our fault,” said Taş. “We were the ones being victimized by that initiative.”

In the same Radikal article, prominent writer Bora said “Texas was the place where lynching was entertainment for the public,” asking if that was what Teksas wanted to be.

The members of Teksas.org, however, said there was a humorous story behind the name. Soon after the club’s foundation in 1963, Bursaspor fans were traveling to Zonguldak for an away game. Police officers in Zonguldak were surprised with the sight of hundreds of fans pouring into the city in a convoy. Likening the scene to what they had seen in Westerns, an officer asked “if they were coming from Texas.” The title stuck with the group thereafter.

The tradition lives on. Today Bursaspor fans boast of being one of the most devoted football supporter groups in the country. But Teksas tries to do more than just chanting at games, it wants to help the community as well.

“We have helped in the building of 17 schools to date. We went to schools in poor villages and repaired everything by ourselves. We go to visit the orphanage at every opportunity,” Erkan Hasoğlu from Teksas.org said. “But nobody writes about it, which is really dubious.”

However, when Teksas took center stage during the recent international qualifier, it did not disappoint. In the World Cup qualifying group game between Turkey and Armenia, 5,000 Teksas members did their best to support the team and give messages of peace.

Just before kick-off, the supporters group released more than a dozen white doves at Bursa’s Atatürk Stadium. They then unfurled a banner saying “Welcome to Hrant’s homeland” in Turkish, Armenian and English as homage to the slain Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

By and large, however, Teksas.org members said that they try to steer away from politics.

“They try to put politics into the game but we won’t let that happen,” said Harun Aydın. “Let the politicians do the politics. Our thing is football. We will always be there to support Turkey and Bursaspor. Turkey is our love, Bursaspor is our passion.”