Chobani founder’s football foray sparks nationalist ire in Turkey

“Happy is the one who calls themselves a Turk.” The much-quoted end of a speech by the revered founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, on Republic Day in 1933 has long irked the country’s Kurdish minority. Tens of thousands of them took up arms against the Turkish state in defense of their right to call themselves Kurds and to resist forced assimilation imposed by successive governments, often brutally.

Hence, when Hamdi Ulukaya, the Kurdish American yogurt king who founded Chobani, recently described the citizens of Turkey by another term, he drew sharp criticism from the purists. How dare he call Turks anything but Turks, many fumed. The commotion has yet to subside as celebrities on opposite sides of the debate trade barbs over social media. 

It all began when the former refugee-turned-billionaire entered a landmark sponsorship deal in July with Fenerbahce, the premier league Turkish soccer club of which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a diehard fan. The contract gave Chobani stadium and jersey naming rights for European matches and will help the Istanbul-based club earn around $15 million annually over a period of 10 years, making it the most lucrative partnership in Turkish sports history.

In his remarks during the signing ceremony at the 115-year-old club, Ulukaya addressed the nation as “Turkiyeliler,” a term that means “people of Turkey,” instead of “Turkler,” which means “Turkish people.” Many Kurds regard the latter label as connoting Turkish ethnicity and therefore as racist and exclusionary. Proponents of the term disagree, saying it transcends ethnicity and covers all citizens of the country and to claim otherwise is nothing short of separatist treason.