FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Sports

Report: Gun-Wielding Teammate Has Two of Turkey's Top Soccer Players Afraid to Play for National Team

Gökhan Töre allegedly put a pistol in a teammate's mouth, and pointed it at another's knee.
Photo by Geoff Burke/USA TODAY Sports

Hakan Calhanoglu, a 20-year-old attacking midfielder for Bayer Leverkusen, is one of the Bundesliga's brightest young stars. Voted last season's Young Player of the Year by hipster-rag 11Fruende, he's made five appearances for the Turkish national team. Calhanoglu and his Leverkusen teammate Omer Toprak, who has played 19 times for Turkey, were both included in the Turkish team for this month's 2016 European Championship qualifiers, but later declined their call-ups.

Advertisement

"Toprak suffered a recurrence of a problem with his right calf in the game against Paderborn and Calhanoglu is struggling with an injury to his left calf," reads the explanation published Tuesday on Bayer's website. Nobody made much of it. Injuries are a pretty standard reason to miss a national team camp.

Read More: The World's Weirdest Sports Team Owner

But yesterday, Calhanoglu's father Hüseyin provided a different explanation for his son's absence. In an interview with Turkish newspaper Hürriyet—that has since been reported widely in the German press—Hüseyin said his son and Toprack declined the call-up because another Turkish national team player, 22-year-old Gökhan Töre, who plays club soccer for Besiktas in Turkey, had threatened the pair with a pistol.

Hüseyin's account confirms reports from earlier this year of an altercation that apparently occurred in October of 2013. Turkey had just lost 2-0 to Holland in a World Cup qualifier. It's still unclear what set Töre off, but Turkish newspapers reported that Töre and some friends put a gun in Toprak's mouth and to Calhanoglu's knee.

Web.de reported that Töre, who was born in Cologne, was himself shot in the shoulder at a Turkish nightclub last April. The wound required surgery. Töre, who has represented Turkey 19 times, has since recovered and was called onto the team for this weeks Euro qualifiers.

The realization that Töre might be a street criminal dressed in a soccer jersey, and that Turkey's best young player is at home in Germany locked in a panic room, is not one that will put head coach Fatih Terim at ease. The revelations come at a terrible time. Turkey lost its first Euro 2016 qualifier to Iceland, a country with a population just 0.42 percent the size of Turkey's, which makes tomorrow's match against the Czech Republic—only the second in this qualifying round—a must-win.

How Coach Terim will deal with the problem remains an open question. Hüseyin Calhanoglu is waiting for answers. He said Terim is well aware of the situation.

"I ask [National Team] Coach Fatih Terim: What would happen if somebody threatened your son with a gun?" said Hussain. "Hakan and Omer will not play again with Töre in the team."

Today, Cologne's Express, caught up with Calhanoglu. He said his father made the statements without consulting him. "The fact that I can not be with the national team has nothing to do with the incident at the time," he said. "I'm not going because I have a calf injury."