ABSTRACT
One cold, wet morning in December, I headed into Istanbul to watch the Beşiktaş soccer team play a match against Bursaspor, a team from the city of Bursa, the original Ottoman capital.
‘You’re going to hear all kinds of swearing’, the taxi-driver told me. ‘You’re going to hear unheard-of things that nobody should ever hear’. He seemed genuinely worried.
‘It’s O.K.’, I said. ‘I’m trying to advance my knowledge of the Turkish language’.
‘If you’re trying to advance your knowledge of the Turkish language, I’m not sure a Beşiktaş match is the first place I would advise you to go’. We drove for a while in silence.
