July 13, 2000
ISTANBUL JOURNAL
Turkish Brand of Extreme Polo Making Comeback
By STEPHEN KINZER
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Erol Reyal for The New York Times
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Horsemen at a recent competition in Istanbul playing the centuries-old, lightning-fast sport called cirit, which is regaining popularity. Instead of mallets, they wield wooden spears, which they hurl at their opponents.
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STANBUL, July 12 -- Clouds of
dust enveloped the riders who galloped across a field, wooden spears
in hand, on a recent Sunday afternoon in this former capital of the Ottoman Empire.
When one rider came close enough
to a competitor, he would hurl his
spear, hoping to score six points by
hitting him. Forcing an opponent's
horse to veer off course counts for
three points. A rider who falls from
his horse loses three points and the
respect of the crowd.
This lightning-fast sport, played
only in Turkey, is a throwback to the
days when Ottoman cavalrymen
were among the world's most fearsome warriors. After a long period of
decline, it is enjoying a rebirth of
popularity.
Cirit, as the sport is called, is most
popular in eastern Turkey, where
traditions of horsemanship are still
strong. But four years ago its promoters won official recognition as a
sport federation like any other, and
the Istanbul competition was part of
an effort to introduce it to a wider audience.
The federation has codified the
rules of cirit (pronounced jir-IT),
recognized 34 seven-man teams and
begun looking for sponsors. It also
supports a formal training course for
aspiring players at the University of
Erzincan, an eastern city where the
sport has been popular for centuries.
"Look at the riders here today,"
said Alper Yazoglu, the federation's
director. "Some have gray hair, but
there are also plenty who are 16 or 17
years old. People are realizing that
we need to hold on to the cirit tradition. It's part of our culture, part of
what it means to be a Turk."
Cirit is exciting even to outsiders
who do not appreciate its subtleties.
The horses are magnificent creatures of Arabian stock, agile as polo
ponies and able to accelerate to great
speed in a few strides.
Play begins with teams lined up at
opposing ends of the 140-yard-long
field. Each competitor performs a
series of passes, seeking to throw his
spear or disorient his opponent's
horse in a blurry encounter that
flashes by in a few seconds.
"I learned from my father, and he
learned from his father," said Sami
Gunel, who at 49 is one of the oldest
certified competitors. "When I was
growing up it was something people
did in villages. You'd see kids playing on their own, out in the fields.
Nowadays people seem more interested in cars then horses, but when I
see a big crowd like this, I think maybe we'll be able to save this sport after all."
People are thought to have begun
riding horses 4,500 years ago on the
steppes of Central Asia, and the first
to do so were probably ancestors of
today's Turks. So were the first
mounted archers, who took to the
field in the 8th century B.C. on the
vast plains north of the Caspian and
Black Seas.
Turkic tribesmen spent much of
their lives on horseback. Children
were put on sheep's backs before
they could walk so they could learn
the feel of riding. Adults ate, drank,
conducted business, held meetings
and even slept on horseback. The ancient Chinese called them "horse
barbarians."
Some Turkic peoples in Central
Asia still play games on horseback.
The most accomplished among them
may be the Kyrgyz, who have one
game in which teams of horsemen
fight to throw a goat's carcass into
an opposing goal and another in
which women on horseback gallop
away from pursuing men who try to
steal high-speed kisses.
Cirit -- the name means javelin --
was devised about 500 years ago as a
form of training and exercise for
cavalrymen of the Ottoman Empire.
The field on which the recent Istanbul competition was staged is said to
have been used for the same purpose
centuries ago.
Although many Ottoman soldiers
came from Christian backgrounds,
the spahis, or cavalrymen, were
Muslim Turks. They were considered almost helpless when on foot
but invincible when mounted. To gallop at full speed, turn backward and
shoot a deadly arrow at a distant foe
was only one of their many skills.
"Give him his horse," wrote one
historian, "hand him his bow, din in
his ears his commander's roar --
'Come on, my wolves!' -- and you
had, if not the first centaur to bear
arms since the days of myth, then a
man at any rate hard to tell apart
from his horse."
The Ottoman army marched off to
war almost every spring, and to keep
their skills sharp during the winter
the spahis developed games to be
played on horseback. One involved
hurling a lance through a ring while
galloping. Another required the rider
to fire an arrow at a suspended brass
ball.
Cirit evolved from these games. It
faded in the 20th century as new
forms of warfare replaced archery
and new machines weakened the tie
between rural people and their
horses. But today, young men from
eastern Turkey are again embracing
it.
Promoters hope that competitions
in Istanbul and other western cities
will make cirit a national sport. Once
they achieve that, they want to take
it abroad.
Many people in the Istanbul crowd
were migrants whose families had
moved from Erzincan, Erzurum,
Bayburt and other cities that are traditional cirit centers. But there were
also some who had no connection to
the sport or the region that had nurtured it.
"This is my second cirit match,
and this time I brought my daughter," said Zafer Oguzcanoglu, a shopkeeper who has lived all his life in Istanbul.
"It's a thrilling thing to see, and
it's getting more popular all the
time," he said. "The next step is to
get matches on TV. Then the riders
will become big stars, and we'll send
them all over the world to show people what a great sport this is."
