What was supposed to be a moment of silence for the Paris attack victims at a soccer game, instead turned into loud boos by Turkish fans and chants of "Allahu Akbar," which means "God is great.”
Voices of America noted that the boos and chants disrupted the planned moment of silence before a match between Greece and Turkey Tuesday night. And after the game, the Turkish team’s manager, Fatih Terim, was not at all pleased about it.
“We're staging a moment of silence for people that have died,” he said. “Can't we be patient for one minute? When we go abroad, we're not able to explain this. It doesn't reflect well.”
This is at least the second time Turkish fans have booed or chanted loudly during a call for a moment of silence to honor victims of terror attacks.
"We do know there are people who actively support ISIS,” said Semih Idiz, a political columnist for Turkey's Cumhuriyet newspaper. “We do know that there are large numbers of people who are actively anti-Western, or anything Western or Christian. It's inbred into their collective subconscious. You can go all the way back to the Crusades. This doesn't take long to surface in Turkey. But I don't think this [is] representative of the country."
Both of the teams on the field did stand in silence to observe the moment.