Snapshot: Embargo This

Turkish Cypriot footballers strip to their socks, to protest their exclusion from international games.


TURKISH CYPRIOT FOOTBALLERS stripped to their socks and sneakers in December, 2005 in Kyrenia, which is in the Turkish-controlled part of Cyprus. They were protesting their exclusion from international games. However, they modestly covered their midriffs with a sign that read “Balls to Embargoes” in English, and roughly “Goal Against the Embargoes” in Turkish. (Apparently the idiom doesn’t translate.)

The photo op was organized by Embargoed, a Turkish Cypriot protest group. “Some people said it might be risky,” using male nudity to make a political point, said Ipek Ozerim, a London-based spokeswoman for the group. Cypriot society is fairly conservative. “But I’m sure the women will love it,” she quipped.

Like so much else on Cyprus, sports has been segregagted since long before the island was divided in 1974. Professional football—that’s soccer to us Yanks—got its start in Cyprus in 1934, when the Cyprus Football Association (CFA) was established with eight founding members, including one Turkish Cypriot. But tensions between the two communities rose dramatically in the 1950s. In 1955, Turkish Cypriots broke off from the CFA and formed their own league, the Cyprus Turkish Football Association.

When Cyprus gained its independence from Britain in 1960, only the Greek Cypriot football association joined the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA), the world governing body for football, which is based in Switzerland. Occasionally FIFA would allow the Turkish Cypriots to play “friendly” matches with FIFA teams. Then in 1983, Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot political leader, unilaterally declared a separate state—calling it the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, or TRNC—which to this day only Turkey has granted politcal recognition to. Since that move, FIFA has banned Turkish Cypriot footballers like those pictured above from so-called “friendly” matches, too.
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(The photo above is courtesy of www.embargoed.org.)