Euro 2008: Germany, Turkey and a Conflict of Loyalties

Travel Blog • Elyse Franko • 06.26.08 | 4:41 PM ET

I spent the latter half of yesterday afternoon watching the Germany-Turkey Euro 2008 match in a Washington, D.C., bar with a bunch of Turks while maintaining a text message conversation with a German friend. It was an odd situation for me. I’m neither Turkish nor German, but I’m a self-proclaimed Turkophile with deep-seated connections to Germany. Being that I’ve spent two years out of the last five living in Germany and only five months in Istanbul, it would seem my loyalties should be painted black, red and gold. But it wasn’t so clear cut.

I’m by no means alone in feeling conflicted. Turks in Europe have had difficulty deciding whom to support in this Euro Championship—the old country or the new? As Der Spiegel reported on Tuesday, German integration policies—which until 2004 did not automatically give German citizenship to German-born children of foreign-born parents—may have led some German-born Turkish athletes to play for Turkey, thereby posing a threat to the German national team. Hamit Altintop, who’s one of the Turkish team’s strongest players and normally plays for the German football club Bayern-München, played against several of his German teammates, including Miroslav Klose and Bastian Schweinsteiger.

Anyway, I showed up in red and white. My German friend indignantly told me in a text message that I was a traitor. (“You’ve lived in Germany much longer! Put on black, red and gold right now and start some fights!”) But here are a few reasons for my decision:

1) At the beginning of this tournament, no one imagined that Turkey could come this far. Many of the team’s key players have been injured or red-carded and they’ve still played fantastically. They played yesterday without starting goalie Volkan Demirel and forward Nihat Kahveci, who scored two goals in Turkey’s game against the Czech Republic.

2) I would have loved to see a Turkey-Russia final, just to stick it to the EU.

3) I lost all respect for Michael Ballack when he began advertising for a German McDonald’s product called the “Big Tasty Bacon” in 2005.

After Philipp Lahm scored the winning goal for Germany in the last minute of the game, it turned into a somber afternoon for just about everyone in the bar—except for the Turkish girl sitting next to me, who’d apparently had her own inner conflict and was rooting for Germany.

Photo by Elyse Franko