SPORTS EDGE

Football UEFA Euro 2008 Austria-Switzerland Turks are now Germans Afp, Berlin Turkish fan are dejected after watching their national team lose to Germany at the "Fanmile" (Fan zone) in Berlin on Wednesday. Photo: AFP Hope turned to sadness for Germany's huge Turkish minority on Wednesday as their team were denied a place in the finals of the Euro 2008 football championship by none other than their host country. But the atmosphere remained mostly peaceful as many of the country's nearly three million Turkish supporters vowed to back Germany all the way in Sunday's final against either Spain or Russia. "Of course the Turks are disappointed tonight but we will all come together and watch the game on Sunday and course we will all be rooting for Germany," 44-year-old Harry Memmer told AFP in a Berlin bar packed with supporters from both teams. "Naturally we are sad but of course we will be backing Germany," echoed 26-year-old Guerkan in Berlin's main Turkish district Kreuzberg, nicknamed the city's "Little Istanbul." At half-time the sides were evenly matched, with Ugur Boral putting Turkey ahead on 22 minutes before Bastian Schweinsteiger levelled the scores four minutes later. After the break one more goal apiece had them level-pegged four minutes from the end, but Philipp Lahm's spectacular late strike sealed the game and shattered Turkey's dreams of a first ever European Championship final. Turks first came to Germany in the 1950s as "Gastarbeiter" or temporary workers, but large numbers stayed and brought over their families, making them Germany's largest minority today. Integration has been slow and much has been made in the German press of Turks' divided loyalties ahead of the match, even among third- and fourth-generation immigrants. Thousands of extra police were deployed across the country from Munich to Frankfurt to ensure that the mix of rival fans, beer and summer sunshine did not become too volatile before, during and after the match. In the capital, home to 120,000 people of Turkish origin among a population of 3.4 million, authorities said 1,500 police including reinforcements from four other states would be on the streets. In Munich, 300 uniformed officers kept the revelry in check, a third of them outside the Olympic stadium where 30,000 people watched the game via satellite, while Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg and other cities beefed up security. Police said that between 20 and 30 vandals attacked two Turkish kebab shops after the game in the eastern city of Dresden and that a small number of people had been injured inside. In the western city of Cologne police said that 21 people had been taken into custody including seven out of a group of around 50 football hooligans known to police. But on the whole Germany took on a carnival-like atmosphere as rival fans good-humouredly jeered at each other and watched the match together in bars and on huge screens set up in the centres of towns and cities. "It doesn't matter who wins ... The atmosphere will stay good whatever happens," 22-year-old German fan Carmen told AFP at Potsdamer Platz in central Berlin before the match. In the capital police made 13 arrests, "but considering the amount of people we are very happy ... There have been a few verbal altercations but that's it," police spokeswoman Claudia Frank told AFP. More than 400,000 fans had massed around the "Fan Mile" near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to watch the game on massive screens beamed in from Basel -- so many that police had to cordon off the area before kick-off. In many parts of the capital, bars were filled to bursting with fans from both sides, all in a friendly atmosphere, with faces painted in the two nations' colours and flags fluttering on cars, buildings and even people. "I think that for Germany and maybe also for Turks living in Germany it was all in all a very, very exciting game and of course I am especially delighted that Germany won," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on ZDF television. The left-leaning Tageszeitung said it was odd Germans should wonder why the nearly three million Turks and people of Turkish descent in their midst supported Turkey and not their country of residence. "Immigrants of Turkish origin represent the biggest group, that is why they stand out," it said. "They are not that different from other minorities -- certainly not in their soccer patriotism." The two top selling newspapers in Germany and Turkey -- Bild and Hurriyet -- issued a joint call for calm in their Wednesday issues, saying soccer was too important to fight over. "German-Turkish friendship will be in first place today, regardless of who continues on to the final," the editors, Ertugrul Ozkok and Kai Diekmann, wrote. "We want to see Germans and Turks partying together!" Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble saw the match as a test of the peaceful, but sometimes tense, relations between Germans and Turks living in the country. "Let not only the best team win on Wednesday but also German-Turkish friendship," he wrote in the Berlin tabloid B.Z. "I am not that interested in football but when Turkey plays it's different," 16-year-old Rabya said in Kreuzberg. But she added that a German victory was not the end of the world. "I am German too," she said.