A study on fan's folklore via example of Çarşı, Beşiktaş Gymnastics Club's supporter group

Its history aging back to before Christ, B.C., football is known to have the biggest number of players, supporters and viewers worldwide. The establishment of the rules of the game began in the middle of 19th century and it has become an institutional sport over the years. There is a vast amount of attention for football, completely incomparable to other sports. It is a well-known fact that football affects all social aspects of life both in Turkey and in all other countries all around the world. The social sciences literature investigated different dimensions of the sport such as football industry, football clubs, sports management and football fans. However, the existing literature is mostly limited to sports management, sports sociology, marketing, public relations, advertising, political sciences and economics. Football includes really important elements of the folklore culture in addition to popular culture. These folkloric elements have not been explored thoroughly in the existing literature with the exception of a few thesis and articles. Beşiktaş Gymnastics Club, which is among the biggest four football clubs in Turkey, has a well-known and efficient fan club called 'Çarşı'. This thesis investigates the folkloric elements such as pride, appreciation and satisfaction that lead the extreme fans to gather and act in a collective manner. In this manner, the thesis follows the idea that collective conscience, path to common knowledge, rituals, written and verbal culture unite people to have a 'fan folklore.' Via the help of the Beşiktaş Gymnastic group and Çarşı supporters, the fans of the football sports are considered to be a community that is gathered around a common purpose and emotion, not as a mass of people that is just a part of the football culture. Fans are attached to their teams emotionally and the ways of attachment differ among people. The emotions that enable group motivation and the rituals stemming from this motivation forms the backbone of the fan folk culture. Fans transfer the common knowledge they gained through the generations and help form a cultural heritage. This organic structure carries the signs of the history and the culture of the community that they live in. In this thesis, with the help of the of Beşiktaş Çarşı football fan club, we investigate the folkloristic elements that is built by the common emotions, thoughts and behavioral patterns observed in a society. I aim to give the term 'fan folklore' an academic and scientific meaning with the help of the knowledge we obtained by the literature review and analysis of the interviews conducted for this study.