Saudi Arabia dominated last year's summer transfer window. The talk was of nothing but the monumental sums offered by Saudi clubs for European stars. This summer, Turkish clubs have taken centre stage.
Among Istanbul's big three, Galatasaray is the club that has made the two most sensational signings: Victor Osimhen and Leroy Sané. The Nigerian striker had played for the yellow-and-reds on loan last season, and they agreed to pay Napoli €75 million for his permanent transfer. This is the most expensive signing in the history of Turkish football. Galatasaray will pay Osimhen a net annual salary of €21 million, comprising a base salary of €15 million, a €1 million loyalty bonus, and €5 million for image rights.
But that's not all. While the club didn't have to spend a euro on a transfer fee for Sané, his salary will be €12 million per year.
Turning to Fenerbahçe, new striker Jhon Durán, on loan from Saudi club Al-Nassr, will reportedly earn almost €20 million a year. His former teammate Anderson Talisca, who also moved to Fenerbahçe, will earn €15 million a year.
This sudden and coordinated surge in spending presents a profound paradox. Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, and Beşiktaş have massive debts and are the teams of a country in a rather precarious economic condition.
It is estimated that the combined debt of these three clubs and Trabzonspor, considered the fourth largest club in Türkiye, exceeds one billion euros.
How can a league whose most important clubs are drowning in debt afford to pay salaries on par with, and even higher than, those in the richest leagues in Europe?
The Importance of Football
To fully understand the reasons behind the enormous investments in Turkish football, and especially the importance this sport holds for the society of Türkiye, it is essential to briefly review the sociological significance attributed to football by several important intellectuals over the years.
Sefa Secen perfectly explained it in his article “Political Polarisation and Football in Turkey”. The following paragraphs are taken from his article.
Many of them have long highlighted the problem of the ever-increasing attention paid to football in modern times. For the Italian writer Umberto Eco, the sport represented vanity and an apolitical morality. Similarly, Gramscian-style thinkers have argued that football has served the commodification of daily life, distracting the proletariat with sporting "circuses," hindering their revolutionary potential, and creating further opportunities for domination by the ruling class.
This perspective echoes Karl Marx's description of religion as "the opiate of the people." In the same way, mass spectacles like professional football can act as a powerful opiate. They distract the population from the hardships of daily life by offering an "illusory paradise" of tribal belonging, preserving the existing political order for the benefit of the ruling class.
A consequence of this interpretation is the depoliticisation of football fans. It assumes that fans' unbridled passion leads to an inability to notice and focus on everyday problems. Addicted to the narcotic substance, they would no longer be able to take social stances and, above all, to realise how authoritarian regimes are taking over their lives.
However, the relationship between the commodification of sport and the depoliticisation of its fans has proven to be much less direct. The very characteristics that make football stadiums effective venues for state-sponsored spectacle also make them powerful arenas for political resistance, even under authoritarian regimes. The most famous recent example occurred during the so-called Arab Spring, when fans of Egyptian clubs Al Ahly and Zamalek played a crucial role in the uprisings against Hosni Mubarak, protecting protesters in Tahrir Square and confronting the police. Another example is the team Traktor Sazi in Iran, whose home matches have become the only place for the Azeri population to express their dissent. I have discussed this in depth in this article.
In the contemporary Republic of Türkiye, these two opposing forces exist in a constant and dynamic tension. On one hand, politicians exploit football to build political support; on the other, marginalised segments of society use stadiums to express their dissent through politically charged slogans and chants. The greatest example of this is surely Amedspor, the team that represents the Kurds in Türkiye. I have also discussed this in a separate article.
In the Republic of Türkiye, football is simultaneously used by the state as a "release valve" to manage social discontent and as a platform to project national strength, but it is also used, or perhaps it is better to say was used, by segments of society as a vehicle for political opposition.
Football in Türkiye
Football is by far the most popular sport in the Republic of Türkiye. It was introduced during the Ottoman Empire era, in the 1870s, by British merchants in port cities like Istanbul, Izmir, and Thessaloniki.
Initially, Turkish people were not allowed to play football. In fact, for the first few years of its existence, Galatasaray was not officially recognised. It was founded by Ali Sami Yen, a Turkish student of Albanian origin, to play and defeat non-Turkish teams—namely the British, Greeks, and Armenians, who were the ones allowed to practice the sport.
During the 1950s, the sport underwent a process of professionalisation, with the creation of a national league (Milli Lig) in 1959, partly driven by the national team's qualification for the 1950 and 1954 FIFA World Cups.
It was only after Galatasaray's golden years at the turn of the millennium—winning the UEFA Cup and the Super Cup in 2000—that the national team achieved significant international milestones.
With a team built around Galatasaray's stars, the national team finished third at the 2002 FIFA World Cup and reached the semi-finals of UEFA Euro 2008. These achievements allowed football to become deeply rooted in the collective psyche of the population, elevating it to a symbol of national pride.
Football in the AKP Era
Football and politics in the Republic of Türkiye are deeply intertwined. This is certainly not a new phenomenon. The qualitative leap, if we can call it that, occurred under the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP).
When the AKP came to power in late 2002, it inherited a sport with immense emotional and political capital. Under Erdoğan—a former semi-professional footballer—the state has systematically moved to harness this capital, transforming itself from a passive regulator into the "main investor" and architect.
The most visible manifestation of this strategy has been an unprecedented, state-led stadium construction boom. Since the AKP has been in office, it has initiated at least 30 new stadium projects in 27 different cities. This national infrastructure program served multiple purposes.
First, it was a key component of the AKP's construction-based economic model, which fueled growth and allowed the government to reward a new, loyal entrepreneurial class of pro-government construction companies with lucrative public contracts.
Second, it created a powerful system of patronage. The process was typically managed by the Housing Development Administration of the Republic of Türkiye (TOKİ), which mediated deals where the land of old stadiums was transferred to private developers in exchange for a new stadium on the outskirts of the city. This model made clubs financially dependent on the government's goodwill.
The culmination of this political project can be seen in the rise of İstanbul Başakşehir F.K. A club with little history, it is based in a conservative district, an AKP stronghold. With strong government support and close personal ties to President Erdoğan—who scored a hat-trick in the stadium's inaugural match—Başakşehir won the Süper Lig title in the 2019-2020 season.
This success has been described by many as being engineered, purely for political purposes. The goal was to officially challenge the other three Istanbul giants on the pitch, but an important part of the contest was also played out in the stands, where the fan bases of Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, and Beşiktaş were becoming an uncontrollable political force for the government.
This was especially evident during the Gezi Park protests in 2013, when the fans of the "Big Three" united in anti-government chants. The government responded to these protests by introducing the controversial "Passolig" e-ticketing system in 2014 to monitor and control fans.
Other examples materialised in the following years. In 2011, during the inauguration of Galatasaray's new stadium, fans booed Erdoğan for his growing authoritarianism and chanted, "We will not surrender, we will not be silent, no one is king or sultan."
In 2018, after Galatasaray's 2-0 victory over Başakşehir, the yellow-and-red fans began to sing, "We are the soldiers of Mustafa Kemal," a reference to the founding father of the Republic of Türkiye.
This has led to a transformation of football in the Republic of Türkiye, as explained in detail by Sefa Secen in his piece "Political Polarization and Football in Turkey":
“Football turned into a form of public dissent and a vehicle for communicating discontent by the silenced masses in the country. Football stadiums allowed anti-government fans to disrupt authoritarian politics and make their voices heard, although to a limited extent. All of this helped generate another cleavage in Turkish football. For a long time, the major cleavage was regional as Anatolian teams tried to challenge the hegemony of the three Istanbul teams. However, as a result of Erdoğan’s growing authoritarianism and interference in the sport, a new cleavage emerged: teams with more government support and pro-government fan groups vs. teams with less government support and anti-government fan groups.”
Sefa Secen also points out how pro-government banners began to appear in stadiums.
For example, in 2017, during a match where Başakşehir beat Club Brugge 2-0, a group of fans displayed a banner that read, "Erdoğan is the Commander-in-Chief." This is a title reserved by secularists to honour the founder of the Republic of Türkiye, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Anatomy of a Bubble
But let's return to the present day. The glamorous veneer of record-breaking transfers and superstar salaries conceals a perilous financial reality. The economy of football in the Republic of Türkiye is a bubble, inflated by political will and unorthodox financial manoeuvres. The very clubs spending tens of millions on players are, by standard accounting, technically insolvent.
The debt figure we are talking about is staggering. By early 2025, the combined debt of the "Big Four" clubs—Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş, and Trabzonspor—had surpassed €1.14 billion.
This is not a recent problem, but a chronic condition worsened by years of financial mismanagement. The report published by UEFA in 2024 painted a bleak picture. Turkish clubs lead European clubs in negative equity. This means their total liabilities far exceed their total assets.
Furthermore, their wage-to-revenue ratio stood at a dangerous 88%, above the 70% sustainability threshold recommended by UEFA. Academic studies confirm that the clubs have effectively lost their equity and are financing not only their assets but also their accumulated losses with ever-growing mountains of external debt.
This relentless borrowing to cover operating deficits creates a vicious cycle of higher principal and interest payments, further jeopardising their long-term future.
In this context of financial ruin, the salary commitments for the 2025-2026 season appear not just ambitious but reckless. The league's wage bill is now dominated by figures that would be at home in the English Premier League or Spain's La Liga, as illustrated below.
How is all this possible? But more importantly, why?
The answer to the first question lies in two mechanisms that operate outside the normal rules of football finance, both deeply intertwined with the unique political and economic situation of the Republic of Türkiye.
The first is a paradoxical advantage derived from the country's economic struggles. The government's unorthodox economic policies have resulted in high inflation and a significant devaluation of the lira. While this has devastating impacts on the daily lives of average citizens, it has simultaneously provided a form of relief for football clubs, whose huge debts are largely denominated in the local currency. As the currency weakens, the real value of their domestic debt erodes, making it easier to manage.
The second mechanism is large-scale, state-sanctioned real estate deals. Unable to generate sufficient operating revenue, clubs have turned to selling their most valuable physical assets. In a landmark deal, Galatasaray sold its training centre in the prestigious Istanbul suburb of Florya.
This transaction is believed to have been worth half a billion dollars and provided a huge cash injection. Similarly, Fenerbahçe has announced plans to sell a large plot of land in the city's Atasehir district, a deal expected to generate over $100 million.
These are not sustainable, repeatable sources of income; they are one-time liquidations of historic assets, akin to selling the family silver to pay the bills. Crucially, such high-value real estate transactions in the heavily regulated and politicised market of the Republic of Türkiye are virtually impossible without political alignment and government approval.
Political Dividends
Now that we have seen how this bubble was created, it is fair to ask why all this is necessary. Is it solely to achieve success on the pitch? The reward would not be worth the risk.
Indeed, behind these rather questionable operations, many experts and journalists from the Republic of Türkiye see political interests.
In his article "Is Turkey becoming football's next Saudi Arabia?", Cengiz Ozbek points out that:
“Over 90% of Turkish football fans support one of the big three, giving them enormous political clout. Their vast fan bases represent a powerful "vote bank" often courted by governments, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party, the AKP.
In 2022 the government introduced a law that it said was meant to prevent reckless borrowing by clubs. This law provides for serious sanctions, including clauses that allow prison sentences for officials who drive their clubs into debt. However, the law, which permits clubs to borrow only up to 10% of their previous year's gross revenue, has never been enforced.
Many believe the ruling party uses this law as a stick against football clubs and fan groups to control them.”
The journalist highlights a very significant shift in the world of Turkish fandom. After taking to the streets for the 2013 protests and turning stadiums into places to openly express dissent, none of this was repeated after the arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu, the presidential candidate of the main opposition party, the CHP.
There were no chants in the stadiums, and the presence of fans in street protests was decidedly lower.
"The government, which uses control over club accounts as a reward-and-punishment mechanism, is effectively assigning the task of controlling the stands to the club management."
— Mustafa Adıgüzel, CHP deputy
Interviewed by DW, economist Aksar stated that the heavy indebtedness of the major clubs is engineered by design to ensure their alignment with the government. If the law were enforced, club executives would risk prison.
Conclusion
The dazzling summer of 2025 in Turkish football does not seem to be the dawn of a new, financially sound era. Instead, it appears to be the dramatic manifestation of a flawed and fundamentally unsustainable model.
The current spending spree is a high-stakes bubble, propped up by a precarious combination of political patronage, one-off asset sales, and a volatile macroeconomic environment, rather than by the organic, repeatable revenue streams that underpin healthy football ecosystems.
The financial foundations are dangerously weak. As detailed in UEFA reports, the top Turkish clubs are trapped in a vicious cycle. The obsessive demand from fans for immediate sporting success forces them to spend far beyond their means on transfers and wages.
The resulting operating losses compound their already colossal debt burden and destroy their equity. This, in turn, increases their dependence on external bailouts—namely, the state-facilitated real estate deals that provide the temporary cash infusions needed to service old debts and finance new acquisitions. This is not a growth strategy but a crisis cycle, where future assets are continually mortgaged to pay for present glory.
This is a political bubble, more than a financial one. The ability of clubs like Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe to outspend their European peers is not a reflection of their commercial acumen but of their political alignment. The entire structure depends on the continuation of a specific political-economic regime that views football spectacle as a tactical necessity.
The inherent risk is clear and profound. Any significant change in the political landscape could pop the bubble. A new government with different priorities, a crackdown on clientelistic capitalism, a shift in urban planning policy, or even a successful stabilisation of the economy could remove the very pillars supporting this house of cards.
The beautiful game, a source of immense national pride, has been transformed into an instrument of state policy, its fate now inextricably linked to the volatile political and economic trajectory of the Republic of Türkiye. While fans may celebrate the arrival of world-class stars today, the long-term health of the sport has been mortgaged against an increasingly authoritarian political future.
In an ideal world Gezims articles would be mandatory to educate Western European football fans. Top quality as always Gezim.
It’s so detailed and covers from several aspects.