Mehmet Guzelsoz normally looks forward to football, but the weight of expectation surrounding the match between Turkey and Armenia today is proving difficult to bear.

It is not the game that worries him. Both sides have already forfeited their chances of travelling to the World Cup finals next year.

What worries Mr Guzelsoz, the chairman of the biggest supporters’ group in the northwestern Turkish city of Bursa, where the match will be played, is what could happen in the stands. “Did they really have to chuck this fireball into our laps while the whole world was watching?” he asked.

The match brings to a climax the process of rapprochement that began last year at an Armenia-Turkey match in Yerevan, the Armenian capital. It was attended by Abdullah Gül, the Turkish President. His Armenian counterpart, President Sargsyan, now plans to return the gesture by going to the Bursa match.

Times Archive, 1915: Wholesale murder in Armenia

Confirmation has reached us of Armenian atrocities of a nauseating and appalling character

• Turks invade Armenia, 1920

• Partition of Armenia, 1920

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Nationalists on both sides oppose the thaw. Afraid of sabotage, authorities in Bursa have been on red alert for days. Their first port of call has been to the supporters’ club, called Texas after the wild reputation its members acquired in the 1970s.

“We’ve talked to everybody,” Mr Guzelsoz said. “The police chief, the governor, politicians, even the President.”

On Sunday morning a Cabinet minister visited the 20,000-seat Ataturk stadium in Bursa to talk to prominent Texas members. “He told us to show the world we are model fans,” said Selim Kurtalan, a Texas fan better known as “the Boss”. “We promised we would do everything to ensure the match went well. Stadiums are for sport. Politics is for outside.”

That is not the image many Turks have of Texas. Since September 26, when violence broke out during a match between Bursa and a team from the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, the group has been pilloried in the press as a hotbed of racist nationalism.

When some Diyarbakir supporters failed to stand for the national anthem that has been a fixture of domestic games since a Kurdish separatist war broke out in 1984, Bursa fans began hurling insults, stones and plastic chairs. A 12-year-old boy was taken to hospital with head injuries. Texas members said that the affair was blown out of proportion. “We accept we are hooligans,” Mr Guzelsoz said disarmingly. “What annoys us is to be described as extreme nationalists.”

Mr Guzelsoz, a Kurd from Diyarbakir,agrees that the slogans shouted during the match were offensive. He blamed the violence however on provocateurs sitting in stands beyond the Texas group’s control.

Running parallel with the Armenian rapprochement, unprecedented Turkish efforts to solve its Kurdish problem have “unfortunately created a fertile ground for provocation”, he added. “Texas will cause no problems but this isn’t even our match. Who else will be in the stadium?”

On Sunday, a small crowd of Turks and Azerbaijani students waving national flags gathered outside the stadium to protest against the Armenian thaw. “The public is being tricked,” Fahrettin Yokus, a trade union leader, told bystanders.

Like many Turks, Texas members said that the Armenian rapprochement could move forward only if Armenia took steps to end the occupation of Azerbaijani land that it has controlled since the 1990s. Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 to show solidarity with Azerbaijan. Reopening it is one of the steps foreseen by the protocols, due to be ratified by Turkish and Armenian parliaments.

Yet for all their sympathy for Azerbaijanis, most Bursa football fans said that they supported the rapprochement. Batuhan Demirtas, a Texas member, quoted a slogan by Turkey’s founder, Kemal Atatürk: “Peace at home, peace in the world.”

“A century ago, England and France tried to carve this country up,” he said. “Is there any point in scratching old sores? Of course not.”

Nonetheless, the authorities in Bursa are taking no chances. About 2,500 police will be on duty in the stadium tonight and surrounding buildings have been searched.

Texas members doubt that many Armenian fans will turn up. They intend to welcome those who do, mirroring friendly scenes during the match in Yerevan last September.

They even plan to sing a well-known folksong — claimed by Turks, Azeris and Armenians as their own — about a Muslim boy’s tragic love for a Christian girl.

“We have been dragged into politics against our will,” Mr Guzelsoz said.

“That final whistle blows and it is all over for us — politics, opening the [border] gate, opening the window, they can do what they want. We just want to go back to supporting our team. That is our life.”

Turf wars

• Christmas Day 1914, British and German troops stop fighting in First World War. Thousands play football in no-man’s land

• 1938, At Germany-England “friendly” in Berlin, England told to make Nazi salute. England win 6-3

• September 1967, two sides in Biafran war declare truce to watch Brazilian team Santos, starring Pelé, play two matches

• 1969, “Football War” erupts between El Salvador and Honduras after three matches. First match (Honduras won 1-0) marred by riots. Second match (El Salvador won 3-0) sees dead rats thrown in Honduran dressing room. After third match (El Salvador won 3-2) El Salvador invades. Thousands killed and 100,000 displaced

• 1980, North and South Korean World Cup qualifier moved from Pyongyang to Shanghai, because North will not fly South Korean flag or play national anthem (Score 0-0)

• October 2008, Palestinian team play first home game, near Jerusalem, against Jordan

Source: Times database

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