Whilst Portsmouth Football Club are facing up to administration and life in The Championship, researcher Oktan Keles claims the club was established by Sultan Abdulhamit II to conduct intelligence reports in Britain during the latter years of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish influence at the club was such that Portsmouth FC also adopted a "crescent" in its club badge, an emblem that remains today.
The information came to light when Keles, a writer on Turkish affairs, was researching papers on Abdülhamit II on the build up to the First World War. In the early years of the Twentieth Century Great Britain was known to use sporting and cultural occasions to gather intelligence information. In an effort to redress the balance the Sultan employed some of the Portsmouth players to gather information relevant to Ottoman Empire interests.
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Prior to the outbreak of war in 1914, relations between Britain and Turkey were not good. Turkey blamed Britain for stirring up incidents of unrest in the Balkans and the dominance of the Royal Navy in the Eastern Mediterranean was a persistent irritant to the Turks.
Whatever information was passed back from Portsmouth to the Sultan appears to have had little effect on the course of history. When I put my feet up on my footstool tonight to watch the televised highlights of how "Pompey", a club with no money and in the hands of financial administrators, beat Tottenham Hotspur to reach their second FA Cup Final in the last two years I shall raise my glass to Sultan Abdulhamit II for his contribution to English football.
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