The Silence of an Era: Listening to Aziz Yıldırım

Watching Fenerbahçe's General Assembly yesterday, one thought kept running through my mind: time really does change everything.

There was once a president who, when he stepped up to the lectern, made everyone in the hall hold their breath, whose every sentence was the next day's headline. Yesterday, at that same lectern, a man who had run Fenerbahçe for close to twenty years was speaking; but this time not with the power of office, with the weight of the past...

The name Aziz Yıldırım brings different things to mind for different people. For some it is modern facilities, for others the great European nights, for others the fight through the 3 July process, and for others the arguments that never ended... He had plenty who loved him, and plenty who criticised him in the harshest terms.

But whichever view you hold, one fact cannot be denied: as one of the longest-serving presidents in Fenerbahçe's history, he left a mark on the club's memory that will not be erased.

What struck me yesterday was not so much what he said as the way he said it.

He was not as angry as he used to be. There was none of the old defiance either. What came across instead was the calm of a club elder carrying the load of the years. A stillness that comes perhaps from everything lived through, perhaps from the acceptance that time teaches.

You cannot help but think.

The president once carried on thousands of shoulders, the man the whole country watched in every transfer window, is today recounting his past and seeing, in the telling, that his own era is quietly passing into history.

Isn't that the cruellest part of football?

Those applauded yesterday are sitting in the stands today.

Those who made the decisions yesterday are watching them today.

Those who planned the future yesterday are recounting the past today.

Football waits for nobody.

Presidents change, managers change, footballers come and go — but the clubs go on living.

Perhaps the greatest truth lies exactly there.

Aziz Yıldırım may no longer be president of Fenerbahçe. But anyone writing the club's history cannot pass over his name in a couple of lines. Because telling the story of Fenerbahçe's last quarter-century is impossible without telling the story of Aziz Yıldırım.

Nobody has to admire his stewardship, of course.

His transfer policies can be criticised.

His approach to governance can be debated.

The decisions he made can be questioned.

But ignoring the years he devoted to the club would be an injustice too.

Yesterday's General Assembly reminded me not of a president, but of passing time.

Life sometimes tells you the biggest truth through silence.

One day you are sitting in the most powerful chair.

Then, in the same hall, looking at the same colours, you are simply recounting your memories.

Perhaps that is exactly where a presidency ends; and what is left is only what you built for the club, the mark you left on people, and how your name will be remembered in the history books.

Fenerbahçe will carry on with new boards.

New presidents will come.

There will be new titles, and new disappointments.

But one truth was visible again at yesterday's General Assembly:

Some people leave their posts; but they never leave their club's history.

Aziz Yıldırım, with his controversies, his successes, his mistakes and the twenty-odd years he gave to Fenerbahçe, will go on living as one of those names.