re: Mesut Özil announces his international retirement

Posted on 7/23/18 at 12:40 am to crazy4lsu

Posted by Keys Open Doors

In hiding with Tupac & XXXTentacion

Member since Dec 2008

32838 posts

Posted on 7/23/18 at 12:40 am to crazy4lsu

Bluefin's explanation is on point.

Also, I am not sure if/when Ozil has met with Erdogan beforehand. However, this was right before the election when he posed with Ilkay Gundogan and Cenk Tosun. These guys are either Erdogan supporters or naive to the point of having the political IQ of a 5 year old. I clearly believe it is the former. And in the German political realm, these three guys taking a photo with Erdogan is an extremely transparent PR ploy/get out the vote effort by Erdogan and the AKP for a super important demographic.

Germany obviously has a huge diaspora of Turks and Erodgan has long had his sights set on the Turkish vote there. One of his most clever moves has been greatly lowering the fee that dual nationals can pay to avoid military service.

In the past, it cost about 10-15K to get out of compulsory military service and enroll in a 3 week program instead. You had to be a dual national with 36 months of foreign employment in order to be eligible. As a result, pretty much the only people who could do this were professional athletes, graduate students in PhD programs abroad, and wealthy Turks who lived abroad and their children. This was disproportionately in the US, whereas the millions of German Turks didn't have the resources as they came from entirely different backgrounds and economic means. Erdogan slashed the fee for this down to 1000 Euros and eliminated even the three week requirement, making it much easier for German Turks to keep their citizenship, avoid compulsory military service.

This made him very popular with the German Turkish population, many of whom were already in favor of the AKP to begin with.

In what was expected to be a very contested election, Erodgan wanted to get as many votes as possible and he wanted to align himself with some famous and well-liked individuals. He's obviously not going to get many singers, actors, and of course no models, so he went with sportsmen. I assume Enen Kanter's phone line was busy.

On the other hand, Emre Can declined to meet with Erdogan and didn't join Gundogan, Ozil, or Cenk Tosun.

Now, why would the Germans be against their well known celebrities promoting a foreign candidate? It's very clearly because of Erodgan's ideology, his issues with Merkel, and his autocratic rule that has led to more journalists being imprisoned per capita than China, Iran, or Pakistan. Nobody would have said a word if Klose took a photo with a centrist Polish politician, or for that matter, if Emre Can took a photo with Muaharrem Ince (I realize that is a bit speculative, but I am confident in that assertion).

German politicians, journalists, and even soccer administrators have valid reasons for this critique, and Ozil is nothing more than a disingenuous coward who has been coddled his whole life and can't respond to valid criticism. Instead, he tries to appeal to center-left sensibilities and claim racism. This may work in the US but I am highly doubtful Germans who understand the situation better would fall for such weak shite.

ETA: Meant to say Ilkay Gundogan instead of Kerim Demirbay

This post was edited on 7/23/18 at 2:55 am