Because the volleyball sport neared its finish, hundreds of followers watching on large screens in an Istanbul park rose to their ft and fell silent. The ball soared, a Turkish participant set it up close to the online, and her teammate spiked it. Her Italian opponents blocked the shot however knocked the ball out of bounds, handing victory to the Turks and inflicting the gang to erupt into chants of “Turkey! Turkey! Turkey!”
The nail-biter victory on Friday by Turkey’s nationwide girls’s volleyball workforce within the Women’s European Volleyball Championship was the newest conquest by the nation’s most profitable main sports activities workforce, a document that has turned it right into a uncommon supply of nationwide pleasure that holds attraction throughout the nation’s social divides.
Whereas some ultraconservatives have attacked the ladies as an affront to Islamic values, their followers laud them as paragons of feminine empowerment in a rustic the place many ladies really feel they’ve but to attain social equality. And the workforce’s successes are a welcome vivid spot for Turks scuffling with sky-high inflation, political polarization and a sluggish restoration from devastating earthquakes in February that killed greater than 50,000 individuals.
Affectionately known as “the Sultans of the Web,” the workforce received the Volleyball Nations League championship in July in Arlington, Texas, and have become the world’s top rated women’s national team, in line with FIVB, the game’s worldwide governing physique. On Sunday, they face Serbia within the closing match of the European championship in Brussels.
At house, the workforce’s video games are aired stay by the state broadcaster and its gamers exude star energy. Legions of followers on social media rejoice their accomplishments, monitor their frequent hair-color modifications and speculate about their romantic entanglements.
Company sponsorships and state help have flowed in. In 2021, when Turkey granted citizenship to the Cuban-born participant Melissa Vargas, she received her new Turkish ID card from none apart from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“They’re fighters,” mentioned Ceren Duyan, a biologist at a biotech firm who watched Friday’s sport within the park. “Once we see girls do good issues in sports activities or anyplace else, we see that we too may be highly effective.”
The volleyballers’ rise comes amid a global reckoning with how feminine athletes are handled in contrast with their male counterparts. Final month, the pinnacle of the Spanish soccer federation was suspended after giving a feminine participant an undesirable kiss on the lips. In July, the BBC apologized after one in every of its reporters requested the captain of the Moroccan nationwide girls’s soccer workforce if any of its players were gay.
Turkey’s workforce has largely averted such controversies, though the gamers’ private kinds have linked them to a few of Turkey’s deepest divisions.
Whereas its individuals are predominantly Muslim, Turkey was based in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, its first president, as a secular state. A lot of Turkish politics revolves round struggles between those that treasure the nation’s secular legacy and people urgent to develop Islam’s function in public life. The latter camp contains Mr. Erdogan, Turkey’s predominant politician for 20 years.
The gamers are clearly within the former camp.
They don’t cowl their hair or put on clothes that conceals their our bodies, as most religious Muslim girls do. As an alternative, they seem in the usual uniform of shorts and tank tops, and a few sport tattoos. Ms. Vargas, the workforce’s high scorer, has not too long ago appeared on courtroom along with her hair dyed electric blue or bleached blond, with a blue lightning bolt over her ear.
After a victory on Wednesday in opposition to Poland, one participant, Zehra Gunes, informed Turkish reporters that the workforce was advancing Ataturk’s imaginative and prescient for Turkey.
“As Turkish girls, we attempt to be function fashions for future generations by holding a light-weight on the trail that Ataturk confirmed,” she mentioned.
One other star participant, Ebrar Karakurt, obtained floods of hateful and homophobic messages after posting images of herself on social media in affectionate poses with different girls, and an Islamist newspaper referred to as her “a nationwide disgrace.”
In 2021, when the workforce was competing within the Summer time Olympics in Tokyo, a outstanding preacher sharply criticized the workforce for not adhering to his conception of how a Muslim lady ought to behave.
“Lady of Islam! You aren’t the sultan of the courts; you’re the sultan of religion, advantage, chastity and decency,” the preacher, Ihsan Senocak, wrote on X, the social media platform previously generally known as Twitter.
A spokesman for Turkey’s volleyball federation finally responded to the hubbub, praising Ms. Karakurt for having the “the spirit of a fighter to symbolize her nation.”
“Everybody’s non-public life considerations them solely,” the spokesman mentioned. “All the remaining is hokum.”
Ms. Karakurt has not too long ago struck again at her critics in her personal method.
Final week, an X consumer named Abdulhamid responded to one in every of her posts, saying, “Because the Muslim Turkish nation, we proceed to place up with you.”
After Friday’s victory, Ms. Karakurt posted a photograph of herself holding a sign that learn, “Reduce the crap, Abdulhamid.”
The workforce’s successes resonate as a result of Turkey has lengthy seen sports activities as a approach to assert itself globally.
“It was at all times the motive of Turkish sports activities to achieve success in worldwide encounters to show that we’re reliable — as highly effective, as profitable, equals to our Western friends,” mentioned Daghan Irak, a senior lecturer in media communication on the College of Huddersfield in Britain. “It’s a crucial a part of our society’s psyche by way of sports activities.”
Mr. Erdogan and his authorities might not respect the whole lot in regards to the workforce’s public profile, Mr. Irak mentioned, however the president most certainly appreciates their inspirational worth.
“Clearly, Erdogan is extra within the nationwide pleasure this workforce generates than the life-style questions,” Mr. Irak mentioned.
Mr. Erdogan, an avid soccer participant in his youthful years, has not attended any of the workforce’s video games. However he did call Eda Erdem, the workforce’s captain, after its first sport within the Tokyo Olympics to say he had been watching.
“You made us sentimental, you made us teary,” Mr. Erdogan mentioned, passing his greetings “to all the women.”
After the workforce received a match this summer season, an opposition lawmaker, Gulcan Kis, filed an inquiry to the Parliament asking why Mr. Erdogan’s sports activities minister had not attended any video games and prompt it was to keep away from angering conservatives.
“Is the focusing on of the nationwide girls’s volleyball workforce by non secular students the explanation to your absence from the ultimate sport?” Ms. Kis requested.
However the squabbles haven’t harm the recognition of ladies’s volleyball, or the huge infrastructure supporting it. The nationwide girls’s league is vastly aggressive and wealthy in sponsorships. And the Training Ministry runs a “Sultans of Tomorrow” program to introduce the sport to women in provincial cities.
The success of the nationwide workforce has attracted a brand new technology of ladies to the sport, mentioned Neslihan Demir, who retired from the workforce in 2017.
“All of the little women in Turkey need to play volleyball now since they’re watching their huge sisters as function fashions,” she mentioned.
The gamers’ broad social acceptance has inspired dad and mom to let their daughters play, too, she mentioned.
Ms. Demir recalled assembly a household who requested her whether or not their 9-year-old daughter might turn out to be a Sultan of the Web.
“Begin directly,” she informed them.
Safak Timur contributed reporting.
