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The President Makes a Play: Putin and Erdoğan’s Sporting Diplomacy (With Jared Strange)

Political leaders often use the arena of sport to powerfully stage their authority. Some even take to the field themselves, usually in low-stakes exhibitions designed to inflate their aptitude and reinforce their populist credentials. In this chapter, we examine two leaders who have used sports performances to burnish their personas and expand their influence: Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. As part of a carefully cultivated image as a rugged outdoorsman, Putin annually performs in a hockey exhibition alongside his oligarchs and famous heroes of the Soviet and Russian Federation Olympic teams. Putin always wins, and his opponents comically contrive ways to let their president score. Erdoğan, meanwhile, has close ties to the Turkish soccer establishment, thanks in part to his career as an amateur player, his affiliation with an Istanbul club (which he consummated with a conveniently excellent performance in a friendly match), and his overt courting of established stars in the Turkish diaspora. Though both men have mobilized sport for their political aims, their forays into the arena have engendered resistance and revealed their foibles, illustrating that sport is as much a stage for political contestation as it is for promotion.