Turkey, Egypt: Football Fans against Autocrats

The Korea Times

18 May 2016

James M. Dorsey

Other public spaces in Turkey and Egypt have pitched militant soccer fans against authoritarian leaders determined to limit the supporters’ ability to challenge their authority.

As a result, a struggle that comes on the back of years of confrontation in the stadiums and mass, watershed anti-government protests that in 2011 toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and in 2013 rocked Turkey and reinforced President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s autocratic instincts, has moved beyond stadiums.

In Egypt, general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi inaugurated a new office of the Interior Ministry at the Police Academy in New Cairo, east of the Egyptian capital, as part of the relocation of the ministry away from Cairo’s downtown area where ithas long been a target of protests. The police academy joined the prosecutor-general, state security, and judicial bodies in an effort to deprive protestersof symbols at a time of mounting discontent.

… Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

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