Turkey has been boycotting the Eurovision Song Contest for the fourteenth consecutive year.

However, social media in Turkey has recently launched a spontaneous song contest for the national soccer team, which will compete in the World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Anthems for soccer teams, political parties (before every election), or simply patriotic anthems for anniversary dates are a distinctive feature of Turkish society.

Ahead of the 2026 World Cup, pop singer Sinan Akçıl was the first to release his entry. Below is a translation of a few lines from the sports anthem “The Turks Are Coming”

​Let those who do not love you die

Even if one of us perishes, we will become a thousand again

You know very well whose grandchildren we are

​From the east to the west of the world …

The Turks are coming

The Turks are coming

​We are a different nation

We have no equals

Think about it now —

We will be your headache

Our blood, our life

Our name is conquest…

Now let’s compare this with the most aggressive lyrics from the song Tarkan wrote in 2002 for the national team participating in that year’s World Cup in Japan and South Korea. Turkey returned from that tournament with its best result in history — third place. And the song is called “On This Path, We Will Become One.”

You know we’re absolutely crazy.

In summer and in winter — wherever you are, we’re with you.

On your path, we will become one.

Come on, push forward, let our hearts triumph!

You’ve earned these trophies by right.

Take them and bring them here — let everything turn into a celebration!

We’ll follow you through deserts and seas.

We won’t give victory to strangers; we’ll narrow the field for them.  

How many seasons have we waited for this day!

The debate, which has drawn in virtually every political analyst, journalist, government official, and opposition figure, has boiled down to this question: Is the national soccer team competing for victory, or is the Ottoman army marching to war against Vienna or Persia?

Sinan Akçıl, who is something of a local Enrique Iglesias, has never been seen in a state of jingoistic ecstasy. For nearly 20 years, he has entertained audiences with romantic ballads, beach tunes, and catchy pop songs that stick in your head from the first listen. When a singer like this senses the mood of the times and writes a war march, it signals profound shifts in society.

Journalist Deniz Uras, comparing these two lyrics, concluded that a quarter-century ago, the most aggressive soccer lyrics rallied fans for victory. Back then, no one forgot that it was all about the show. Now, the lyrics foster every manifestation of societal narcissism. No one cares about soccer anymore.  If you don’t know the event the lyrics were written for, it’s not even clear why the Turks are going somewhere or what they’re going to die for.

All of this would seem comical if it were a unique manifestation of Turkish patriotism or a random outburst from a pop singer trying to appeal to a new audience. However, this disease of acute patriotism, whose pandemic has affected countries that no one is currently attacking, is a sign of global right-wing madness (which does not negate the existence of the left). “Russkiy Mir,” MAGA, the nationalist slogans of Asia’s Modi and Europe’s Fico — to which Romanians, Bulgarians, and Poles, with their two Confederations and one PiS, may soon join — are proof that it is not only the Turks who are “on the move.”

And this reminded me of events and poems that we can only know from history and literature, because they took place over a century ago. The greatest Crimean Tatar poet of all time, Bekir Çoban-zade, wrote his famous work “Tınç tatar çölünde” (In the Quiet Tatar Steppe) in Budapest in 1916. 

‍

Çoban-zade, then a young professor at the Universities of Lausanne and Budapest, witnessed how, during World War I, a host of Eastern European nations were marching toward independence. And he mourns for Crimea, where there is only silence, and people are like frightened animals. He compares the Crimean steppe to a man dying of thirst who longs to drink. But there are some very frightening and prophetic words there: “This land needs blood to quench its thirst, but where is that lion when there are only hares all around?” 

The poem is very powerful and stirs the heart, yet — “fear your own desires.” Everything Choban-zade wished for in the poem came true. Lions appeared, and blood, which began to saturate the Crimean steppe, the mountains, and the sea.

The poet himself also fell victim to Stalin’s bloodthirsty regime. Çoban-zade was shot in October 1937 in Baku and was not even buried, and six months later, on April 18, 1938, all the poets, scholars, and composers were shot in the courtyard of the Simferopol NKVD. Only those who were already in the camps survived. 

However, it is unlikely that the modern “poet” Sinan has read the classic poet Bekir.