The racism row around the football star’s exit from the national team is causing loyalties to be questioned on the capital’s pitches

As Hakan Gūmūs, 17, walked off the pitch with slumped shoulders on a sweltering summer evening in Berlin, he was consoled by fans offering cheerful high-fives and supportive slaps on the back. His team, the under-19s of Berliner Athletik Klub, had just lost a pre-season friendly, but defeats are always easier when the team spirit remains intact.

“When you make a single mistake, and then you get punished by having your own fans jeer you, or you have to even resign from the team, then that’s sad, isn’t it?” he said.

The “mistake” Gūmūs is alluding to is former Germany international Mesut Özil’s decision to pose for a photograph with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a month before the World Cup in Russia. The “punishment” was jeers and abuse hurled at the player in ensuing matches, and a growing chorus of public figures who blamed the politically charged photographs for Germany’s embarrassing group-stage exit from the tournament. Özil’s resignation from the national team, citing alleged racism and lack of respect, has sent the country into a bout of ill-tempered soul-searching about national identity.

When Mesut plays well he’s a German and gets accepted. But find a Turkish builder and ask if he’s accepted the same way Mehmet Özturk, BAK

Rightwing populists have pounced on the controversy around Özil, who was born in Gelsenkirchen to Turkish parents and holds German citizenship, as proof that people with a Muslim background can never integrate into German society. Alice Weidel, co-leader of far-right Alternative für Deutschland, criticised the Arsenal midfielder as “a typical example of the failed integration of far too many immigrants from Turkish Muslim cultural circles”.

But the shock of Germany’s first football superstar with Turkish roots parting from the national team on such acrimonious terms is reverberating particularly strongly in community organisations such as Berliner Athletik Klub that promote the integration of migrant groups.

Founded in 1907 in Berlin’s working-class Wedding district, BAK has increasingly drawn on talent from the more than 200,000 people of Turkish heritage living in the German capital. For the 2006/2007 season, the club even teamed up with an Ankara-based football club and changed its name to Berlin Ankaraspor Kulübü 07, a decision that officials in hindsight describe as a mistake. “If you want to have a football team that practises integration, it also needs to have a German name,” says Burak Isikdaglioglu, BAK’s director of youth development.

Nowadays the team minibus carries the slogan “Diversity is our strength” and the team is made up of players from a wide range of European, African and Middle Eastern backgrounds. During home games, families mingle beside the pitch eating Turkish sucuk sausage Berlin-style with curry ketchup, and toddlers in Galatasaray shirts compete against each other to see who can list the last German 11 by heart.

But the Özil fallout has soured the idyll. While other Turkish-run clubs in the city, such as Türkiyemspor, have declined to comment, BAK has come out all guns blazing, with a lengthy statement on its website.

“Sport was the last little corner that hadn’t been poisoned by racism,” said Isikdaglioglu. “Now it has been sullied by socially acceptable racism. That’s really sad.” His interest in politics matches his passion for sport. Formerly a member of Germany’s Social Democratic party, he left the centre-left party in 2010 over its failure to expel controversial author Thilo Sarrazin over his attacks on the country’s Turkish minority. He subsequently joined Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats because he liked their law-and-order stance, only to hand in his membership when delegates supported a parliamentary motion on the Armenian genocide.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mesut Ozil poses with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in May. Photograph: AP

While he has not joined Erdoğan’s AKP, Isikdaglioglu said he had increasingly found himself standing up for the recently re-elected president as Turkish-German relations plummet after a series of diplomatic rows, from a ban on Turkish politicians campaigning in Germany, to the arrest of German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel in Ankara.

The strong language of Özil’s resignation statement – in which he accused the German FA’s officials of disrespect to “my Turkish roots” and “political propaganda” – had to be understood in the context of recent relations between the two countries, said Isikdaglioglu. While other German sportsmen with Turkish roots have criticised Özil – footballer Deniz Naki has called on the ex-international to show a similar reaction to attacks on Kurdish-born minorities in Turkey – it is usually individuals’ stance in relation to the Turkish government that has proved decisive.

BAK’s director of sport, Mehmet Özturk, said while there had been a change in attitude towards Turkish minorities when Özil stormed on to the world stage in a Germany shirt in 2010, he had remained sceptical.

“I said eight years ago that when Mesut plays well he’s a German and gets accepted,” Özturk said. “But go out on the street and find a builder called Ali and ask him if he’s accepted as a German in the same way.”

“When I was a player I had to be three times better than a German player to get some match time. That was 30 years ago, but I don’t think things have changed that much.”

Four years ago, when BAK’s first team lost out on promotion to the first tier of German football by a single goal, one TV channel described the team as “playing in red shirts and with black hair” (an editor later apologised, saying it was a mistake).

“I have lived in Germany for 48 years. I have got a German passport, I was married to a German woman, but I can’t say that I am a proud German,” said Özturk. “Why do I have to be? I can’t deny my own heritage. Why can’t I love Germany and Turkey?”

Germany has relatively restrictive policies on dual citizenship for non-EU citizens, and while children born to Turkish parents in Germany can hold two passports, Merkel’s CDU has called for a tightening of the law. One of the most fervent advocates of further restrictions in her party, Reinhard Grindel, is now president of the German FA. At BAK’s training ground, the consensus is that Turkish-German relations within Germany can heal only if Grindel were to follow Özil’s lead and resign.

Görkem-Alp Zeren, 17, who plays in defence alongside Hakan Gūmūs, said he could empathise with the superstar’s decision: “Like him, I have two cultures living inside me, and wouldn’t feel comfortable if I was criticised for that.”

Has this summer’s row discouraged him from playing for Germany? “In this team everyone dreams of playing for Germany, so I don’t think that’s the case.”