How I got stuck with club politics as an advisor to an MA thesis

Dear readers,

I have had a couple of issues in the last couple of days. I feel like evil eyes attempted to break my small humble life in Istanbul.

One of them is quite strange. One of my students from the Cultural Studies program recently defended her thesis. She was involved in Turkey’s one of the major sports club, Galatasaray, and she has produced a critical thesis against the current club administration. Theoretically, she has discussed how populist politics can be embodied in a seemingly non-party politics field. I have had my best to recommend her to be careful about her writing style. In the end, this was an academic output and I care about what my students academically produce.

I have had no idea that this would trigger a quite intense debate within the club politics. From more than one source, people told me that some academics, who are involved with the club administration- were asking me who I was. Some even claimed that I was part of a complot against the current administration. Interestingly enough none of these academics contacted me directly. I find this very strange. One of the chairs in my own university contacted the School of Social Sciences to check about the thesis. (S)he did not have the courtesy to directly get in touch with me.

Today, I asked two lawyers, if the text contains any issues of libel. As I expected there is nothing to worry about.

I was sort of aware of how intense sports club lobbies could be from my own Beşiktaş days, but this case is still interesting. Let’s what comes next…