AKP the Use of Sport As a Political Tool By
The Use of Sport as a Political Tool by AKP How does the AKP use sport as a political tool to influence the society in Turkey ? Ömer Onur HERTEM MES4590 Master's thesis in Middle Eastern studies 30 credits Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Spring 2019 i Abstract George Orwell defines sport as ‘The war minus shooting’. Possible to say that, he exaggerated little bit, but definitely sport cannot be defined as a simple physical competition. Sport has two faces. What is visible on the field, is the first and more known face of the sport, the entertainment part, but there is another world behind the field. A world that has an enormous economic and political power. In today’s world, the final of UEFA Champions League or 100 metres race of Usain Bolt, which takes even less 10 seconds to watch, or NBA Finals bring millions of people in front of their televisions all around the world or to stadiums. This is only possible by sport and when there is a huge economic market and many people in the same sphere, the intervention of the politics into this field becomes inevitable. Already sport and politics were close to each other since the ancient times, but globalization and modernization brought this relationship to another level. This is also what happened in Turkey and by the time, politics and sports were intertwined. What is unique in the case of Turkey is the existence of a very dominant political authority, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi / AKP).
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