A condemned Turkish stadium harbours a dark warning of the long-term consequences of ethnic cleansing or what Turks euphemistically call the population exchange almost a century ago when Turkey and Greece expelled their respective Greek and Turkish minorities.

It is a message that has not lost its urgency as Turkey fights multiple domestic and regional battles against the Kurds, the Islamic State (IS) and the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) domestic foes, IS engages in its own brutal variety of ethnic cleansing ,and Saudi Arabia wages war against Shiite Muslims.

Writing on his blog, John Blasing recalls growing up in the shadow of Izmir’s 125 year-old Alsancak Stadium, where he watched his first soccer match and that hosted in 1959 Turkey’s first ever premier league game.

… James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies as Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a forthcoming book with the same title.