Turkish club’s doner sale turns into political crisis in Denmark

COPENHAGEN

Danish People’s Party (DPP), a nationalist-conservative party in Denmark, has lashed out at Turkish club Vatanspor for selling doner kebab at a stadium in Aarhus, the country’s second biggest city, the daily Milliyet has reported.

“Traditionally, pork sausages are sold at Danish stadiums. This would disintegrate society,” said Pia Kjaersgaard, the leader of the party.

The “doner dispute” started when Vatanspor, a club founded by Turks in Denmark, faced the Super League team Aarhus AGF at the Danish Cup. The match will be played on Sept. 1.

The stadium Vatanspor was playing its matches at was too small to host AGF fans, so the Aarhus side, as a favor, said, “Vatanspor can use our Ceres Park Stadium as the home team’s stadium.”

This was the time when the “döner dispute” started as Vatanspor told its fans that the cafe at the stadium’s A-stand would sell doner kebab and meatballs to fans before the match.

Finding the decision “unacceptable,” Kjaersgaard stated, “A parallel society in which people cannot eat each other’s meals surely would damage social integration.”

Accepting this would mean “bending the knee” to the Turkish club, Kjaersgaard added.

The Turkish team then invited the party leader to the match with an amusing invitation.

According to the daily, officials of the Turkish club “guaranteed that she would be welcomed by an imam at the stadium.”

At first, Kjaersgaard refused the invitation, but she changed her mind later. “I realized that I do not want to miss such an event. They invited me and will welcome me,” she said. “It will be a couple of joyful hours, and I am looking forward to having a debate with these people.”

The DPP is a political party founded in 1995. The party’s ideology is described as national-conservative, social-conservative and right-wing-populist.

Doner kebab is a dish in which the meat is cooked on a vertical rotisserie. The vertical rotisserie was invented in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, and dishes such as Arab shawarma, Greek gyros, Canadian donair, and Mexican al pastor are derived from this.

Founded in 1989, Vatanspor is a club based in Brabrand, Aarhus, Denmark, that competes in the Jutland Series, the sixth tier of the Danish football league system.