ISTANBUL — In the end, the question feels inappropriate. A little ridiculous, even. Arda Turan is sitting on the terrace of an impossibly lavish hotel, picking at a platter of fat grapes and sweet oranges and slices of fresh watermelon. The Bosporus shimmers a perfect blue. The sky is bright and glorious and it stretches all the way to Asia.

It is not the time, or the place, to ask anyone where it all went wrong.

Besides, Turan does not have an answer. Or, rather: as he sits and he picks at the fruit and he talks, it becomes clear Turan has only part of the answer. He can explain why he has not played a minute of soccer since Dec. 1.

His loan deal at Istanbul Basaksehir, the newly-minted Turkish champion, was canceled early after a court issued him a suspended sentence for a spate of offenses related to a fight in an Istanbul nightclub in October 2018. Turan was found guilty of “intentionally injuring” a Turkish singer, before later firing an illegal firearm at the floor in a hospital.

Turan does not make excuses for the incident. He has “made a lot of mistakes.” He accepts that he had to be punished. “I have faced what I needed to face,” he said. He knows — he understands — that it made him toxic.

Source: New York Times

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