Norway’s World Cup Viking antics – a faux pas?

Turkey should follow suit and market itself with its Ottoman past and the Bozkurt symbol – even though it’s a gesture used by the Turkish far-right – pro-government columnist Oğuzhan Bilgin argues in Akşam:

“Ever since the World Cup began, I’ve been stressing that football is not just football but an arena for political and cultural struggles between nations. The Norwegians are even glorifying their barbaric, plundering, primitive ancestors, thrusting them into the global spotlight and turning them into a brand. … It is incomprehensible that by contrast we Turks – one of the peoples with the greatest history of civilisation and statehood – are still hesitating to embrace the Bozkurt grey wolf symbol, our Central Asian roots or the Ottoman Empire as the pinnacle of Turkish history.”