Fevzi Yalin remembers being a football fan since he was a young child growing up in Cyprus. He followed the sport, in part, because his father was a radio broadcaster covering the local and national programs, hearing him discuss the results during his on-air reports. Yalin remembers the Turkish national team visiting the island in the 1970s and going into their locker room with his father, enamored by the players.
“I’ve had people tell me, ‘Soccer is not a sport,’ especially in the United States,” he told Chapelboro. “And my answer to them is: ‘Yes, soccer is not a sport – soccer is a religion.’ That’s way we see it, that’s how seriously we take it.”
When the Türkiye men’s national team qualified for the Euro 2024 tournament last summer, Yalin traveled to Berlin with his daughter to catch Crescent-Moons’ opening match vs. Georgia. The 3-1 win, as he described, was “a highlight of [his] life” and a “magical time.”
“My daughter got us tickets right behind the goal, and boy, the first goal that Mert Müldür scored…I was just floored, I was just right there. And then the other one burned in my head was the goal that Arda Güler scored – that was just classic, and that’s what I hope to see in this game.”
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Tuesday gives Yalin and many other Triangle community members with ancestors and connections to Turkiye a chance to cheer on their countrymen, as the men’s national football team is facing Mexico in Kenan Stadium for an international friendly. While Mexico fans are known for their boisterous support of El Trí, the Turkish community is also very passionate about their team – and has a strong contingency in the Triangle largely because of the Sancar Turkish Cultural & Community Center.
The exhibition game is still hard for Yalin — the vice-chairman of the board that oversees the Sancar Center and a Hillsborough resident — and surely other local Turkish fans to process. To be able to see their national team play more than 5,400 miles from their headquarters on the coast of the Black Sea and instead in their current community is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Yalin said after learning about the game from the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau, he started to hear from Turkish friends all over the east coast who will be traveling to attend. He said the rest of the Sancar Center’s staff and leadership would likely be throwing a big watch party on East Franklin Street like other Turkish institutions are…if they weren’t going to the game. Yalin said the group quickly bought a 20-seat block of tickets as soon as they went on sale.
The center’s namesake is quite a football fan too. Dr. Aziz Sancar – who is a national hero to the Turks for winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry – had dreams of being a goalkeeper for Türkiye. Despite their tight schedule arriving to the Triangle, the football federation president and members of the national team paid a visit to the Sancar Center on Monday to meet Dr. Sancar and tour the facility that features traditional Turkish architecture, artwork and a library of Turkish history.
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Sancar established the center with his wife, Gwen, as a way to showcase the culture of his home country within the Chapel Hill community where he’s done his molecular research since 1982. And Yalin said he hopes Tuesday’s game can further achieve what the center has for the Triangle: educating people on Türkiye and what makes the country unique.
“We have this stigma that Turks are not as modern as we are – some people thing, ‘Oh, it’s a Middle Eastern country,’” said the vice-chair of the foundation running the center. “This will show them how bright and energetic the Turkish youth and the national team is.
“This is going to give people around here another face of Türkiye,” Yalin added. “That’s the way I see it – especially the star the team, Arda Güler. He’s the candidate to be [the creative midfielder] of Real Madrid next year… so we’re all excited to bring these young folks and be able to demonstrate how dynamic of a country Türkiye really is.”
Mexico men’s soccer is a much more popular team and brand in the U.S. and is the organizing side of Tuesday night’s friendly, meaning the Turkish fans could well be outnumbered in Kenan Stadium. But Yalin said he hopes the Crescent-Moons will play well and even the chance to hear the national anthem of Türkiye boom over the speakers will be a great experience for his community.
“We’re going to be out there in full force to support them,” he said of the Sancar Center and Turkish community cheering on the national team. “We’ll have our flags ready to go.”
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