Turkish Ice Hockey Federation Sucks - Part 1 of 3

There, I said it. Something that so many people are afraid to say in a public forum will say it on a regular basis in any rink in Turkey to their friends or teammates. Why does the Turkish Ice Hockey Federation (TBHF) suck you ask? Well, I will fill you in my views as to why the TBHF sucks.

First off, let’s look at their logo. Look familiar? Well it should because it is a horrible knock off of the IIHF’s logos (see below). Way to be original.

Every time I have visited the TBHF offices (5 times) I have been lead into a room with the same scenario every time; two members sitting in front of their nice computers, in their cozy chairs, at their designer desks, and drinking tea. That’s it, drinking tea. One time I came there to see the vice president getting physiotherapy on his knee, while he was sitting at his desk drinking tea. Every time I have visited the office, I got the feeling like I was annoying by causing them to do work, whether it was read a document or sign off on something. Never have I once seen the president around, but that could be because he was upstairs in the embassy like building in his private office. That’s right the TBHF offices are housed in a house that requires you to be buzzed in. Not only that, but sitting out front of the TBHF headquarters are two phone booth like glass cases with two mannequins dressed in equipment with one wearing a Turkish ice hockey jersey and the other one wearing nothing (see photo below). Funny, because there is a shortage of affordable hockey gear in Turkey and there are two full sets sitting in glass cases in front of the TBHF offices.

Transfer cards. Honestly, how hard is it to do a transfer card? Apparently really hard for the TBHF because they didn’t process mine in time for the second game of the season so I couldn’t play and missed a paycheque. Simple error, right? Maybe not, I was told that they sent the card to Hockey Canada only to find out when I contacted Hockey Canada that they had not received my transfer card yet and was waiting to sign it immediately to send back. Another funny issue was when our friend Kate came over and ran into a slew of transfer card problems (primarily due to my clubs blunders) however, when USA Hockey said everything was good to go, TBHF wouldn’t accept their confirmation. It took our coach to march down to the office and do what he is good at, yell, for them to accept the card and let her play in the weekend’s game.

Scheduling a hockey season can be a hard task. However, when there is only one rink being used and only 6 teams in the league, I can’t imagine it being all that hard. But leave it the TBHF to make it the most annoying process in the world. My family would ask me, what was my schedule? I would have to respond, ‘I don’t know’. Because I didn’t and nobody else knew either. To find out when we would be playing we would have to check the website every Wednesday to see if we had a game on the weekend! Some weekends we did, and some we didn’t. Some weekends we would have a game, only to find out that the rink was being used for a curling or figure skating event! Great job communicating with the ice rink!

The second half of the season ended up being played in Istanbul, but every week we would wait and see if we were making the trip to Istanbul for a game. This is one of the most annoying things about the TBHF. They promised the reimburse the clubs all the money for food and bus trips to Istanbul but the clubs have barely seen a dollar from the TBHF for that. So because the TBHF hasn’t given the clubs the money promised, the clubs don’t have money to pay their players! The first road trip to Istanbul was during a horrible snow storm. It was so bad that all sporting events in Istanbul were cancelled (football, basketball, volleyball, etc.). Our club tried to cancel the trip, but the TBHF said that if we don’t make the 7 hour trip to Istanbul and play in that game, then the club would be suspended! By the way, we made that trip to Istanbul to play against another club from Ankara.

This is the end of Part 1 of my rant, but let me clarify why I am writing this. When I arrived in Turkey, I saw so much potential for the sport of hockey to flourish. But after seeing how things are operated in Turkey, it was crushing to see how the Federation has no concern for the sport of hockey and how it is developed. Part 2 will be posted later.