Amedspor Women’s Football Team
Women have been playing football in Turkey since 1954. However, due to the fact that football was seen as a men’s sport, and women were considered strange, excluded and even banned in this field, it was only possible to establish a women’s league in 1994.
Amedspor Women’s Football Team was founded in 2009 under the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality, bringing together women who played football on the streets of Diyarbakır. In 2011, the women’s team took part in the Turkish Women’s League and won successive successes and championships and was promoted to the Women’s First League in 2017.
The team was renamed “Amedspor” in 2014. Due to the name emphasising the Kurdish identity, the Amedspor men’s team was subjected to discrimination and insults during away matches in western Turkey. Both players, fans and the board of directors have been subjected to violence many times. The discriminatory attitudes faced by Amedspor led the team to be more embraced as an identity team among Kurds. It reached a large fan base.
However, the Women’s Football Team, which has been champion for 2 years in a row and reached the 1st League, has never had a strong fan group. This may be because football is still not perceived as a sport for women or no one takes women seriously. Amedspor Women’s Football Team players face more problems and obstacles in the society as both Kurdish and women.
In this study, I followed the traces of women between the ages of 16-26 on the team, their relationships with each other, the team and the city, their fragility, passion, femininity, loneliness, togetherness, winning and losing.
