When UEFA determines where to hold Euro 2032 this week, Turkey is expected to be awarded the hosting rights for a major international football tournament.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish President, has long desired to organize one of the world’s most famous athletic events in his nation.
On Tuesday, October 10, UEFA’s executive committee will convene to select the hosts of the 2028 and 2032 European Championships.
Turkey dropped its candidacy to host the tournament in 2028 in order to concentrate all of its efforts on a joint proposal with Italy to host the tournament four years later.
Winning the privilege to host Europe’s biggest athletic event would be one of the crowning achievements of his presidency.
“In modern times, sport has always been perceived as a means for Turkey to forge its own legitimacy and compete equally with the rest of the Western world,” says Daghan Irak, a media communication lecturer at the University of Huddersfield in England.
“Erdogan has not diverted from that historic strategy.”
Erdogan became Prime Minister at the end of 2002, just as Turkey’s joint bid with Greece to host Euro 2008 fell through at a period of improved relations between the two countries.
Austria and Switzerland were awarded the tournament by UEFA.
Turkey then went it alone in its attempt to host Euro 2012, only to lose out to a joint Ukraine-Poland candidacy, and again in 2016.
They were eventually beaten out by Germany for Euro 2024, with UEFA’s appraisal of the bid expressing concerns over the country’s “lack of a human rights action plan.”
