The Story of the Match: Em Hatin

Last Sunday, in the stands of Diyarbakır Stadium, a woman well past sixty was sending the score to everyone on WhatsApp as the first half drew to its close. Keeping those who didn't or couldn't come to the match up to date is common enough, but in Diyarbakır it is a little different. First, not everyone can get a ticket to these stands — that is the part meant to make others a little envious. Second, a great many people come to a football match for the very first time here, in these stands, for Amedspor. The message also says: "Today I am doing something I have hardly ever done before." In a brief, uninvited glance at the phone of the woman in front of me, I saw the updates she was sending to her Jawshan Reading Group. 1–0, 2–0, and half-time.

In our short conversation during the break, I told her that we had entered the match with Surat al-Fath, but that in the second half we would need al-Nas, al-Falaq and Ayat al-Kursi — and I asked that while the jawshan group kept reciting the jawshan, the juz' group might come back to help in defence. Her husband, sitting beside her, stretched his hands long toward the sky and said he had been praying since morning. "O God, for the sake of Your greatest name…" — his voice, trembling with rapture, was lost in the roar of "Werne Werne" echoing through the stadium, and all around, in nearly every corner, halay lines large and small, of young and old, began to form. In the one just behind me danced Ayla Akat, one of the emblematic names of Kurdish politics.

This is not the first time Diyarbakır has sent a team to the Süper Lig, but it is the first time Amedspor has arrived there. Diyarbakırspor, which rose under the patronage of the late Diyarbakır police chief Gaffar Okkan, also had passionate supporters, yet the shadow of being "the state's team" was more than a shadow over it. Having Gaffar Okkan as a patron did not, of course, spare it the chants of "PKK out!" at away games. A little like the saying "a foreigner in Germany, a German-Turk in Türkiye," it could never fully be one thing or the other, and most of the time it was left stranded between two mosques, praying in neither. There were times when Diyarbakırspor, suffocating under this tension, walked out with a banner reading "We are the people's team, not the state's" — but in vain. The state's project did not take, and without the people's representation it could not hold on in the Süper Lig of those days. We hardly hear of it now; I believe it is struggling in the amateur leagues.

Amedspor — with a nod to Tanıl Bora — was born as an answer to the tension Diyarbakırspor had lived through: the tension between a people's expectation to represent itself and to lean directly on itself, and the state's politics of "governing football and governing through football." It would be the people's team, a team resting on its people, and beyond the score on the pitch it would represent the values of its people and move by a set of values. And so it did. But knowing well that an intention without success finds no echo, it chased success — and ever since the team took the name Amedspor, injustice and hardship chased one another in turn.

"We Walked Through Dark Roads, We Drank Waters Bitter as Poison"

From the 2014–15 season onward, Amedspor was subjected to a long chain of injustices. Injustice bound it closer to its people and drew its people tightly behind it. Success riveted that bond. I will not dwell at length on everything Amedspor went through; those who wish can find and read KSC's report "Kesk û Sor û Zer: Stubbornness, Hope, Football".

At the end of this stony, thorny road, Amedspor's rise to the Süper Lig stirred a joy in Kurdish society far beyond anything foreseen. Some explained it through football becoming a new space of expression, through the widening of the public sphere in Kurdish society, through demilitarisation, through the peace process — and each holds a share of truth. But this joy has a character that contains them all and reaches beyond them.

Kurdish society in Türkiye has undergone, and continues to undergo, a rapid sociological transformation. We are now speaking of a demography that is more urban, more educated, more familiar with Türkiye and the world, that carries its Kurdish identity more openly — and yet is more of Türkiye. This transformation, and the newness it has brought forth, needs new kinds of carriers. We have long known a solidarity in grief and sorrow that crosses borders; but Amedspor is one of the rare things that can unite Kurds in nearly every corner of the world in joy.

According to KSC's research, the number of Amedspor supporters among adult Kurds quadrupled in four years, reaching four million before the Süper Lig. According to the April data of the Diyarbakır Barometer, Amedspor has now overtaken the Galatasaray legend in Diyarbakır. Those in the city whose first team is Amedspor now far outnumber those whose first team is Galatasaray.

Before Amedspor's Süper Lig adventure began, everyone was anxious and cautious. Questions of "Can we really make it?" were followed by uprisings of "Where are the transfers?!" And then it sent Erzurumspor home empty-handed after ten years, went on to beat Salah's Trabzonspor with a splendid performance, put five past Başakşehir, and sent Beşiktaş — the freshest side in the league — home with bowed heads, entering the long international break at the top of the table. For every Amedspor fan, the routine of the next three weeks became checking the standings each night before bed.

Each week is more thrilling than the last, each match more jubilant than the one before. Journeys and visits are planned around fixtures; our mothers, who couldn't tell you how many players are on a team, pray for Gift Orban; old flames who know nothing of offside are offered tickets as a second chance; videos circulate of weddings where the Amedspor match plays on a giant screen, and after Dia Saba's goal the halay erupts as though the heavens had opened. The Amedspor mobilisation and economy that grips the city on match days cannot yet be measured in numbers, but it has become self-evident. The Passolig app, for instance, breaks its visitor record before every Amedspor match. For the past few months, whoever sits down with whomever ends up talking about Amedspor; people who never supported a team, who never understood football, begin with "I don't know what's happened to me" and go on to explain the subtleties of Besnik Hasi's opponent analysis.

We owe this to the resilience of an Amedspor that "walked through dark roads and drank waters bitter as poison" in remaining Amedspor, and to a success that arrived chant by chant — "Diren Ha Diyarbekir," hold on, Diyarbakır. This is the story of a club that grew in the bosom of a people making that people's voice heard by scoring goals. With every match, a people cries out anew — to itself and to the world — who it is: behind the goal the stand asks, "Kî ne em?" — Who are we? — and the long sides answer in an echo: "Kurd in em!" — We are Kurds! It is a way of underlining who we were when we came this far.

Amedspor has become both a worthy representative of its people and a fine team whose football so far has made eyes open wide. Nor does it end there. The supporters have welcomed every visiting side as befits Kurdish hospitality, and wherever they travelled they went with flowers in hand and messages of friendship. They sent Trabzonspor off with Kazım Koyuncu's song "Uy Aha." They ate liver kebab with Beşiktaş fans and visited Rojin's grave. On match days, social media turns into a sea of Amedspor edits. In other words, as club president Nahit Eren keeps insisting, Amedspor came to the Süper Lig in its own colours — and brought colour with it. To see how much this colour has beautified the league, it is enough to look with a fair eye.

At the Beşiktaş match, the choreography of the supporter groups; the tens of thousands in the stadium joining in rapture as the Bremen Solidarity Choir played, to a march rhythm, the song "malan bar kir lê lê / çû ne waran lê lê"; and finally the jersey in the choreography bearing the words "EM HATIN" — these are, in truth, a fine summary of Amedspor's story. "Malan Barkir," a lament of forced migration and exile, has become a supporters' anthem; and the Amedspor that last year had "EM TÊN" (we are coming) written on the front of its team bus now showed, with its "EM HATIN" (we have arrived) choreography, that it had brought one chapter of the story to a successful close.

This new chapter will, of course, be hard. But for now, Amedspor fans prefer to savour the fact that they have not lost at home since 16 March 2025, that they have sent three champions away with zero points, and that the leader's seat is theirs for at least three weeks.

To close: Diyarbakırspor, living in the tension between state politics and the representation of its people, carried on its turbulent journey in the league — and failed — in a climate where, in Uğur Nazlıcan's words, "violence, after a long time, had begun playing attacking football in Diyarbakır again." Today's Amedspor was able to take this name within the atmosphere of a peace process, and when that process collapsed, it passed through a bottleneck full of torment. But, however hard the struggle, it managed to hurl itself into the Süper Lig. Today we are once again within an atmosphere of peace. Now it is dialogue, not conflict, that builds the play, and the front three run us not toward death but toward life, not toward division but toward union. Everyone watching supports it beyond their strength, worry in their pocket, hand pressed to their side.

Football, once again, cannot remain merely football — yet football must also be allowed to remain football. Amedspor is of course more than a club, but above all it is a football club. To burden it with exaggerated expectations beyond the possible is as wrong as stripping it of its identity. It is neither the whole of a story nor free of one; it is a part of our story. This team, which came to the league in its own colours, wants to be an equal part of the league without renouncing those colours: a worthy representative of its people and a quality part of football. This success story — sitting at the top of the Süper Lig, sprouted in the bosom of a people we have lived alongside for a hundred years — should be seen not with the estrangement of "an object is approaching," but as a strong partner in the struggle of Anatolian clubs against Istanbul. Seen this way, both Amedspor's character as a bridge strengthening social cohesion and the quality Besnik Hasi and his pupils have brought to the football arena will appear all the clearer.