25 Ağustos 2011 Perşembe

To Rick Reilly

This letter is a response to Rick Reilly for his article written about Turkey and Turkish basketball...

Dear Rick Reilly

I read your article with a big surprise and frustration since I know for many years that you’re one of the best sportswriter of your country. However, it’s clearly seen from your article that everyone should write about what he writes best. One shouldn’t attempt to write about something he doesn’t have any accurate idea. It’s always very easy to claim someone or some country with inaccurate arguments but that is always a risk for the writer to lose the credibility when these arguments are not well-supported. This is the case with your arguments. It’s clear that you don’t have any idea neither about European (actually Mediteriannean) style of supporting nor the lifestyle or traditions of Muslims.

Let me quickly comment about your article…

First of all, please check some religious books about Muslims and learn the term “Kurban (sacrify)” The thing that Jimmy Baron mentions is not just chopping off the head of a goat. It’s a ceremony of sacrify in Muslims. I understand it’s weird to the non-Muslims who doesn’t know anything about it, but it proceeds according to some certain rules so doesn’t give some pain to the goat while taking its life. It’ not something we have fun, it’s a traditional religious activity. It was easy to ask any Muslims around you but ununderstandably, you prefered to claim about it before search. More importantly, instead of being aggresive to the traditions of a religion, it would be better to critizise your players for not knowing anything about the culture of the country where they performed.

Let’s comment about Joshua Shipp’s speech. If Shipp is too much concerned and unhappy about how basketball played in Turkey or how the fans behaves, please someone tells us why he’s playing in Turkey for three season including this season. The game he mentioned was one of the final series game of TBL and full of stress for both sides. Moreover the derby match between Fenerbahce and Galatasaray is considered as one of the most important derby challenges in the world. Maybe you shoud search about that before writing about it. And if you were a little bit interested in European basketball, such kind of things always happen in big derbies like Pao & Olimpiakos, Red Star- Partizan, etc… Europen basketball fans are all hot and have high loyality for their teams. Not only in Turkey, but also in Greece, Spain, Italy, Serbia…  So, according to your way of thinking, maybe no American players should perform in none of European leagues, ha? Please don’t tease us!

Regarding the comments of Eric Devendorf… They’re all because of his lack of knowledge about Muslim. Please don’t forget that the one who claims about the aggressiveness of the fans in Turkey is the one who was punished during his education life in Syracuse because of punching a woman previously. Muslims don’t drop in the street and pray. If he had read about a few books before coming Turkey, maybe he would see a word called “Namaz”, which is the way of pray of Muslims. So, he could have understood what is the meaning of that. But anyway, it’s not performed in the street.

I don’t want to comment about your words about the arenas in Turkey, and our foods. I hope you’ll visit Turkey to follow a few games during the season and see how a fantastic basketball athmosphere there is in Turkey. And before tasting Turkish food, don’t comment about it. It is always easy to write at your desk. However don’t forget that such claims without supportive evidences will cause you to excuse from Turkish people because of your provocative approach. This is an invitation to you to come to Turkey, visit especially İzmir and İstanbul and follow some games. Then you will find out that your article is a real failure…

Regards

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