Football in the Ottoman Empire
The Turkish Süper Lig returns today for the 2026-2027 season. While the Süper Lig was created well after the Ottoman period, many of the most historic and popular football teams in Turkey and across former Ottoman lands trace their roots back to a growing interest in athletics and competition in the late 19th and 20th centuries. This post is in appreciation of football and the Süper Lig. Those wishing to learn more should check out the recent episode of the Ottoman History Podcast with Murat Yıldız, author of The Ottoman World of Sports.
Participating in a gymnastic club was more than health and community; in the Ottoman Empire, it was also a mark of modernity and rebellion. Much of civil society under the reign of Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909) was heavily restricted or illegal, football included. Sports clubs had to conduct their activities in secret, else they faced a knock on the door from the secret police. The proverbial ball got rolling with the 1908 revolution, which changed everything. In the Ottoman Empire, exercise and health suddenly became a symbol of civilization: competition opportunities to promote your group and prove its quite literal strength, individual athletes new icons of their communities. Teams comprising Turks, Greeks, Armenians, English, or a mixture of many different ethnic players competed in the Istanbul Football League. How these teams and players thought about their identity and relationship to the Ottoman Empire, and their own ethnic communities, is a fascinating study in Yıldız’ monograph.
The Istanbul Football League actually survived the collapse of the empire and continued on for decades. Teams like Beşiktaş, Galatasaray, and Fenerbahçe—still the three biggest clubs in the nation today—all competed in the Istanbul Football League. Fenerbahçe was the most successful club in the league's history, winning the league 16 times. However, Galatasaray would win more league trophies during the Ottoman period, from the league’s inception in 1904 until its end in 1922. Beşiktaş, though founded earlier than its two rivals, would never win an Istanbul Football League title during the Ottoman era.
Likely, at least for international fans in 2026, Galatasaray is the highest-profile club in the Süper Lig, as it will once again compete in the UEFA Champions League. The team was also an early symbol of international football success in the Ottoman Empire. The club was founded in 1905 and is connected to the Galatasaray High School. At a time when elite secondary schools in Istanbul were European enterprises, Galatasaray, operated by the Ottoman Ministry of Education, was the poster child of the empire’s modernization efforts. It should come as no surprise that Turkish patriotism was an important part of the high school football team. In the team’s charter, its aim was “To play… like the Englishmen… and to beat the non-Turkish teams.”
In April of 1914, Galatasaray, consisting mostly of Turkish players except for two “German denizens,” played a friendly match against the Romanian national team and won 4-2, to great celebration across Istanbul, with fans chanting “long live the Galatasaray players.”
Galatasaray’s rivalry with its fellow Ottoman-legacy team, Fenerbahçe, is still fierce today. Fenerbahçe was founded by Turks who enviously watched English expats of Kadıköy play matches against each other on a pitch known as the Priest’s Field (Papazın Çayırı). The players originally wanted to call themselves Moda FC, but an English club already used that name, so they called themselves Fenerbahçe, after the area’s lighthouse. The team gained prominence in the 1910s, even attracting interest in a couple of Ottoman princes: notably Osman Fuad and Ömer Faruk. One of Fenerbahçe’s most celebrated matches was a 1923 match against a squad of Istanbul’s British occupation force. Soon to evacuate Istanbul after the Çanak Crisis, General Charles Harington was desperate to display a final victory against the Turks, if it couldn’t be on the battlefield, perhaps on the derby. Fenerbahçe took Harington’s challenge and won the match 2-1.
Turkish teams like Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe came about after other minority groups already established their clubs. Greeks of Istanbul and Izmir founded their clubs in the 1890s, and even their own sports league: the Pan-Constantinopolitan Games. Clio Sports Club is now known as Beyoğlu SK while its original teammates founded PAOK FC, one of Greece’s top football clubs, after the population exchange. Armenians had a couple teams, most famously Araks FC, and Beşiktaş’ origins was a sports club for Circassian refugees. All these diverse teams played each other on the Priest’s Field, itself becoming a symbol of empire and its cosmopolitanism. Today the pitch is home to just Fenerbahçe, with the name of Şükrü Saraçoğlu Stadium. Unfortunately, back-to-back wars and toxic-nationalism would result in ethnic teams outlawed, star athletes fed to crucibles of violence, and separate tight-knit squads between new borders.
There’s a lot to say about how football spread across the Ottoman Empire, but that’s for a later date. Anyways, if you support a Süper Lig team, we wish your team good luck this season. We hope this post helps you connect with Ottoman history in a fun way.