By Elliott West
“I played football until I was 16. But when snooker is on television, I cannot watch football. Watching snooker makes me happy”.
Grandma Fatma
Introduction
With World Snooker’s quest to globalise snooker now once again in full swing after a two-year pause caused by the Coronavirus outbreak, all eyes are on new countries to kickstart the sport. One of these is Turkey and despite the new addition to the snooker calendar, the Turkish Masters having to postpone this year and moved to March next year, this wonderful land that mixes the cultures of Europe and the ancient history of the Ottoman Empire still seems a successful possibility.
The Nut to Crack
Traditionally snooker is not high on the pecking order of sports that the Turkish population decide to watch, preferring instead sports such as football. In fact, if you went to Turkey and scoured this vast terrain, you would be hard-pressed to find a single snooker club, maybe only catching a glimpse of a tournament on Eurosport if you were flicking through the cable channels.
However, beneath the surface, does lie some green shoots of the sport with the Turkish Billiards Association established in the country and a firm desire from some quarters to expand the sport. Perhaps initially a monetary exercise, the Turkish Billiards Association, has agreed to a four-year deal to host the Turkish Masters in Antalya, the fifth most populous city in Turkey and located on the country’s South-West coast bordered by the Taurus mountains.
This is a work in progress and no one expected this to be an easy task but hopefully, when the big guns of snooker show their face in this country, they will leave a lasting impression and give the Turkish people a hunger for the sport. The task is of course immense and can be seen through the eyes of one of the few passionate snooker fans in Turkey.
Grandma Fatma
The biggest snooker fan in Turkey comes from an unlikely section of Turkish society, an 86 year old lady from the Black Sea province of Trabzon. Her name is Grandma Fatma and she came across snooker by chance when her Grandson Çağdaş Tok became a sports announcer 13 years ago and she started to watch the television sports network Eurosport Turkey. At first, the sport didn’t really draw her attention but when she experienced the silence and suspense of the game, she became hooked.
Fatma is now a huge fan, her favourite player being Mark Selby, in fact, she even cried when she heard Mark Selby’s victory speech at the 2014 World Championship, dedicating the win to his father-in-law who was ill in hospital at the time. From that moment, she has considered Mark to be an adopted son and when he appears on television, she always comments, saying “That’s my son!”.
This Turkish grandmother has taken snooker to her heart but is not a fan when a match gets bogged down in safety play. She loves instead the fast potting and high scoring games and hopes one day that she will be able to go and watch a match live instead of on the television.
