As the volleyball recreation neared its finish, 1000’s of followers watching on big screens in an Istanbul park rose to their toes and fell silent. The ball soared, a Turkish participant set it up close to the online, and her teammate spiked it. Her Italian opponents blocked the shot however knocked the ball out of bounds, handing victory to the Turks and inflicting the group to erupt into chants of “Turkey! Turkey! Turkey!”

The nail-biter victory on Friday by Turkey’s nationwide girls’s volleyball workforce within the Women’s European Volleyball Championship was the latest conquest by the nation’s most profitable main sports activities workforce, a document that has turned it right into a uncommon supply of nationwide pleasure that holds attraction throughout the nation’s social divides.

While some ultraconservatives have attacked the ladies as an affront to Islamic values, their followers laud them as paragons of feminine empowerment in a rustic the place many ladies really feel they’ve but to realize social equality. And the workforce’s successes are a welcome vivid spot for Turks battling sky-high inflation, political polarization and a gradual restoration from devastating earthquakes in February that killed greater than 50,000 folks.

Affectionately known as “the Sultans of the Net,” the workforce gained the Volleyball Nations League championship in July in Arlington, Texas, and have become the world’s top rated women’s national team, in line with FIVB, the game’s worldwide governing physique. On Sunday, they face Serbia within the last match of the European championship in Brussels.

At dwelling, the workforce’s video games are aired dwell by the state broadcaster and its gamers exude star energy. Legions of followers on social media have a good time their accomplishments, observe their frequent hair-color adjustments and speculate about their romantic entanglements.

Corporate sponsorships and state assist have flowed in. In 2021, when Turkey granted citizenship to the Cuban-born participant Melissa Vargas, she received her new Turkish ID card from none apart from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“They are fighters,” stated Ceren Duyan, a biologist at a biotech firm who watched Friday’s recreation within the park. “When we see women do good things in sports or anywhere else, we see that we too can be powerful.”

The volleyballers’ rise comes amid a global reckoning with how feminine athletes are handled in contrast with their male counterparts. Last month, the top of the Spanish soccer federation was suspended after giving a feminine participant an undesirable kiss on the lips. In July, the BBC apologized after one in every of its reporters requested the captain of the Moroccan nationwide girls’s soccer workforce if any of its players were gay.

Turkey’s workforce has largely prevented such controversies, though the gamers’ private types have linked them to a few of Turkey’s deepest divisions.

While its individuals are predominantly Muslim, Turkey was based in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, its first president, as a secular state. Much of Turkish politics revolves round struggles between those that treasure the nation’s secular legacy and people urgent to broaden Islam’s function in public life. The latter camp consists of Mr. Erdogan, Turkey’s predominant politician for twenty years.

The gamers are clearly within the former camp.

They don’t cowl their hair or put on clothes that conceals their our bodies, as most religious Muslim girls do. Instead, they seem in the usual uniform of shorts and tank tops, and a few sport tattoos. Ms. Vargas, the workforce’s high scorer, has lately appeared on court docket along with her hair dyed electric blue or bleached blond, with a blue lightning bolt over her ear.

After a victory on Wednesday in opposition to Poland, one participant, Zehra Gunes, instructed Turkish reporters that the workforce was advancing Ataturk’s imaginative and prescient for Turkey.

“As Turkish women, we try to be role models for future generations by holding a light on the path that Ataturk showed,” she stated.

Another star participant, Ebrar Karakurt, obtained floods of hateful and homophobic messages after posting pictures of herself on social media in affectionate poses with different girls, and an Islamist newspaper known as her “a national shame.”

In 2021, when the workforce was competing within the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, a outstanding preacher sharply criticized the workforce for not adhering to his conception of how a Muslim girl ought to behave.

“Girl of Islam! You are not the sultan of the courts; you are the sultan of faith, virtue, chastity and decency,” the preacher, Ihsan Senocak, wrote on X, the social media platform previously referred to as Twitter.

A spokesman for Turkey’s volleyball federation finally responded to the hubbub, praising Ms. Karakurt for having the “the spirit of a fighter to represent her country.”

“Everyone’s private life concerns them only,” the spokesman stated. “All the rest is hokum.”

Ms. Karakurt has lately struck again at her critics in her personal approach.

Last week, an X consumer named Abdulhamid responded to one in every of her posts, saying, “As the Muslim Turkish nation, we continue to put up with you.”

After Friday’s victory, Ms. Karakurt posted a photograph of herself holding a sign that learn, “Cut the crap, Abdulhamid.”

The workforce’s successes resonate as a result of Turkey has lengthy seen sports activities as a technique to assert itself globally.

“It was always the motive of Turkish sports to be successful in international encounters to prove that we are legitimate — as powerful, as successful, equals to our Western peers,” stated Daghan Irak, a senior lecturer in media communication on the University of Huddersfield in Britain. “It is a very important part of our society’s psyche in terms of sports.”

Mr. Erdogan and his authorities might not admire all the things concerning the workforce’s public profile, Mr. Irak stated, however the president almost definitely appreciates their inspirational worth.

“Obviously, Erdogan is more interested in the national pride this team generates than the lifestyle questions,” Mr. Irak stated.

Mr. Erdogan, an avid soccer participant in his youthful years, has not attended any of the workforce’s video games. But he did call Eda Erdem, the workforce’s captain, after its first recreation within the Tokyo Olympics to say he had been watching.

“You made us sentimental, you made us teary,” Mr. Erdogan stated, passing his greetings “to all the girls.”

After the workforce gained a event this summer time, an opposition lawmaker, Gulcan Kis, filed an inquiry to the Parliament asking why Mr. Erdogan’s sports activities minister had not attended any video games and steered it was to keep away from angering conservatives.

“Is the targeting of the national women’s volleyball team by religious scholars the reason for your absence from the final game?” Ms. Kis requested.

But the squabbles haven’t damage the recognition of girls’s volleyball, or the huge infrastructure supporting it. The nationwide girls’s league is massively aggressive and wealthy in sponsorships. And the Education Ministry runs a “Sultans of Tomorrow” program to introduce the sport to women in provincial cities.

The success of the nationwide workforce has attracted a brand new era of ladies to the sport, stated Neslihan Demir, who retired from the workforce in 2017.

“All the little girls in Turkey want to play volleyball now since they are watching their big sisters as role models,” she stated.

The gamers’ broad social acceptance has inspired dad and mom to let their daughters play, too, she stated.

Ms. Demir recalled assembly a household who requested her whether or not their 9-year-old daughter might turn out to be a Sultan of the Net.

“Start at once,” she instructed them.

Safak Timur contributed reporting.