BasBasBas.com

Tag: football

  • Hypnotized by Futbol

    By far the most popular sport in Turkey is soccer, or as they call it futbol (football). This snapshot was taken on Istiklal Caddesi during the match of Turkey’s two biggest teams, both coming from Istanbul: Fenerbahçe versus Galatassaray. It’s one of the top 10 derby’s in Europe and one of the most exciting games for futbol fans across Turkey and especially in Istanbul. People in shops were following the match on the radio, waiters watching on televisions (as you can see in the above pic) or if they don’t have a TV in their restaurant you can see the waiters running around the corner whenever they can to look at a TV through the window of a nearby shop or restaurant.

    How popular is soccer/futbol/football in your country? What do you call it? What other sports are very popular in your country?

    I’m off to Bulgaria for a few days but posting will continue. You can stay up to date by following my Twitter feed, or subscribe to this blog by RSS or email.

  • Digiturk causes Turkish ban of Blogger/Blogspot

    Since Friday, it’s been impossible to access popular blogging platform Blogger or any *.blogspot.com domain from a Turkish IP address, due to a ban imposed by a court in the south east of Turkey.

    Previously it was rumoured that Adnan Oktar, by some considered the leading Muslim advocate for creationism, might have caused the new ban, since he successfully got WordPress and Google Groups banned in the past, as well as evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ website. However, this rumour was refuted by someone pointing out that Oktar operated in Istanbul courts and the verdict banning Blogger was passed in Diyarbakır, at the other side of Turkey.

     

    Blogger's banned in Turkey screenshot 

    Click to enlarge.

    It’s now reported that it is not Oktar that got Blogger banned, but Digiturk, a subscription based digital TV platform that owns the rights to the live broadcasting of Turkish football league games. Apparently, Digiturk asked Blogger to take several blogs or blog entries down containing links to pirated transmissions of the live games. Blogger did nothing, Digiturk went to court and under Turkish intellectual property law, they managed to get Blogger banned completely, effectively banning millions of websites that have nothing to do with Turkish football or pirating.

    Digiturk’s court cases in the past have managed to block Justin.tv and MyP2P TV for the same reasons.

    Turkey’s NATO membership and EU ambitions seem paradoxical to the infringement on the freedom of press and speech of its citizens, residents and visitors by banning sites like Blogger and YouTube. The EU’s making a blacklist of censoring countries and are creating software for people in these countries to use to bypass the censorship (see: Global Online Freedom Act).

    Thanks to safak for his tip about Digiturk!

    Some useful links to unblock YouTube/Blogger (blogspot)/other blocked pages in Turkey:

    Help get the news out. Stumble, Digg, Slashdot, Reddit or Tweet it!

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  • The Orange Dream

    Holland clears the field after losing to Russia

    It’s over. Done. During the qualifications, Dutch coach van Basten got a lot of criticism, but when the Euro 2008 was there, he amazed everyone. Fans, being skeptical and pessimistic about the Dutch team’s prospects, partly because of Holland’s spot in the ‘group of death’, were surprised by the team’s great victory over France. Hope grew, orange fever exploded and increasingly people started talking about Holland’s chance to take the cup. As Holland had another convincing victory against Italy and beat Romania with a largely substitute team, sky seemed the limit.

    Will they win? Will we finally do it? Will this be the team, the combination, that we will speak about for generations to come?

    It was not to be.

    Russia played a great match and simply did better than Holland. No luck, no referee mistakes, they were simply the better team of the match. Holland created some hope in the second half by scoring an equalising goal, but this hope soon faded as Russia’s team clearly had more energy left in overtime. It’s the end of Marco van Basten as coach of the Dutch team, the last time goalie van der Sar played for the team (one of the greatest Dutch football players ever, in my eyes), and it must be bitter for Boulahrouz who is mourning the death of his child that was born prematurely last Wednesday.

    This means there’s only one thing left to do.

    Root for Turkey!

    Turkish team cheers after win

  • Checkmate.

    Some of you might know I have quite a bad SoapBoxxer addiction. Well, I was just having a discussion and it offered me a good opportunity to flex my wit muscles / muscles of wit, whichever you prefer. The conversation went as below.

    Topic: Holland WILL win it all (Eurocup)

    Patofeo2: they won’t
    Spartz (that’s me): I doubt it, but odds have gone up considerably.
    Patofeo2: I have a feeling czech rep. will win all
    Spartz: Get real.
    Patofeo2: What’s the wager?
    Spartz: five!
    Patofeo2: please write the team you think will win. That way I can talk shit to you when they loose 😉
    Spartz:Czech Republic
    Patofeo2: u bastard!

    Checkmate. 😉

    .
    UPDATE

    Looks like i can relate this post to Turkey after all. Turkey just eliminated the Czech Republic from the Eurocup in the most spectacular fashion!

    Turkey last night made history in the most dramatic fashion imaginable by overcoming a two-goal deficit to emerge triumphant in their winner-takes-all Group A showdown with the Czech Republic.

    Jan Koller and Jaroslav Plasil had put the Czechs on course for a quarter-final meeting with Croatia, but Turkey discarded the script in an unforgettable final 15 minutes with three goals, including two from Nihat Kahveci, to progress to the second stage of a European Championships for only the second time.

    Telegraph

    Fucking awesome! Since I’m going to Turkey this September, I’m rooting for both Holland and Turkey! It’s great to see ‘my teams’ book succes :smile:

    Turkey 3-2!
    Picture: Telegraph

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