From Real to the ‘Sultan’, Ozil becomes the director of Erdogan

The former star of Real Madrid and the German national team Mesut Ozil è entered the Executive committee of the AKP party of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The first step, surprisingly, was taken last Sunday on the occasion of the Congress of the Party in which Erdogan was elected to lead the AKP for the ninth consecutive time.

The formalization of the new assignment for the 36 -year -old former German midfielder of Turkish origin has arrived today: Ozil will be called to express his opinion and make significant decisions in the party and not only on subjects relating to sport, as had been hypothesized. Ozil, born in Germany in Gelsenkircken from a family of Turkish immigrants, as a footballer he began his career in Schalke 04. Considered one of the best midfielders of his generation, he later played in Real Madrid and Arsenal, and then close in Little glorious way in Türkiye, first at Fenerbahce, then to Basaksehir. The retreat came in 2023 after a year passed between the bench and the stands.

Ozil dressed the German national team shirt 92 times resulting in a pillar in the win of the World Cup in Brazil in 2014 and being elected for 5 times, a record, German footballer of the year. Just the fact that Ozil has preferred, unlike many colleagues, the German national team to the Turkish national team, is arousing controversy but the former Real Madrid star already in 2018 had started cutting the bridges with the country where it was born and raised.

At the base of the breakdown, a photo posted on social media that portrayed him together with the Manchester City midfielder Ilkay Gundogan alongside the Turkish leader. A photo that unleashed a social and political storm. Ozil was filled with insults to the point of deciding to abandon the national team: “I am German when I win and immigrant when I lose, it no longer makes sense that you play for Germany,” he said.

In 2019 Ozil had sPassed the former Miss Türkiye Amine Gulse and Erdogan had been the wedding witness. The Turkish leader does not miss an opportunity to repeat one of his mantras, inviting the couple to “make at least three children”. It was a turning point in the life of the midfielder who from that moment on began to expose himself publicly, publishing posts that went beyond sport. Ozil openly condemned the oppression by China of the Muslim minority of the Uiguri, before taking sides with Azerbaijan in the conflict with Armenia.

Ozil is not the first sportsman with assignments on behalf of the Erdogan party. Former NBA HDAYET Turkoglu, he had long assignments in the Ministry of Sport, while the former defender of the Aston Villa Alpay Ozaslan has been parliamentary since 2018. It has not been the same good at the former Inter Hakan Sukur, legendary center forward of the Turkish football, first elected in Parliament in the KEP files and then forced to flee abroad due to the links with the net that made the 2016 coup attempt.