It All Starts With a Dream

When I watched The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift on its release in 2006, I thought we had to bring this to Turkey. Towards the end of that year I went to the Paris Tuning Show, where I saw the whole huge exhibition suddenly spill outside during the day. It was so cold that I assumed nobody would come out to watch the drift show scheduled for certain hours. It turned out to be nothing of the sort. There were three drift show sessions on the first day, and because I was among the last to arrive for each of them, I couldn't find a place in the stands.

That night I thought, why shouldn't we do this in Turkey? And of course I began to dream. The next day I was prepared: I wrapped up warm, walked into the drifters' stand and made contact with them through an interpreter. Using the advantage that journalism gives, I said I wanted to take photographs in the drift area to support the interview, and suddenly found myself in the middle of cars sliding sideways. I had been close to racing cars many times before, but this was a different experience and a genuinely enjoyable one. I was standing among cars travelling sideways. What could be better than that?

I invited the team to Istanbul. I didn't expect them to come, because at that time the constant news about bird flu was making Europeans wary of Turkey. One of the people behind the project and a drift driver agreed to come to Istanbul. We arranged it for two weeks later, but I still had the thought in the back of my mind that "these guys won't come". But they did. We sat down and discussed a drift school, a drift show and the big drift-related projects that might be possible in future. Fortunately they returned home without catching the flu. They wanted a lot, but we were going to accept because we had no alternatives. The contract they sent us was so one-sided in their favour that I was basically going to do all the donkey work. I said, fine, after all we were going to achieve a first.

At that time we began placing adverts for the drift school in the magazine I owned. While we were aiming to attract young people to the training through those adverts, a phone call came. A woman said they had seen our magazine and that her boyfriend, Harald Müller, had set a drift record in Germany. I immediately searched online for who Harald Müller was. I said to myself, I know this man from somewhere, but where? Then, since he happened to be in Istanbul at the time, we met and I said, yes, this is that man. He was one of the drivers who had accompanied us on the big circuits at launch events abroad. But what did this man have to do with drifting? The more we talked, the clearer it became that he was no ordinary person. At that time we were trying to rent the Atatürk Olympic Stadium for training sessions. Harald Müller and I went to the stadium car park in a Nissan 200SX we had borrowed from a friend, and I saw the excitement on the face of everyone who came with me. Yes, we could do this in Turkey.

Then we decided to reach an agreement with Harald Müller. He wanted it very much too, because at that time Harald was looking for an excuse to stay with his girlfriend who lived in Istanbul. We then announced that the training would be given by a record-holder. But we needed a show to support the venture, because that would be the most effective way of getting the word out. Istanbul Drift Show, on the back of the film. It sounded good.

We were going to hold this show in July 2007. It was a risky date, but we had to do it. Besides Harald Müller there were five other drivers, one of them a woman driver named Carola Mecan. For the show we had to use borrowed cars, because the only car we had bought for training was carburettor-fed. We had made all the settings for outdoor conditions, but when the show was held in CNR's enclosed exhibition hall, the car's carburettor system couldn't get the air it needed, and our own car let us down at the first hurdle.

Fortunately we got through the show, but it left behind a pile of broken-down cars, because they were all everyday road cars. All but one or two of them had faults. We had already accepted that risk and had the cars prepared.

After this show came the training programmes that began at Drift Academy Istanbul. Afterwards I felt the need to step away from drift work for a short while. While I was busy with other things in the car media, I kept following developments in drifting. My brother Abdurrahman Özen and the drivers who had come through Drift Academy were by now organising events, even if only local ones.

By now this activity had caught the attention of TOSFED, which became the first national motorsport federation internationally to take drifting seriously. With rules and a race calendar it had begun to attract interest, moving from show to competition. Drift Kulübü and Apex Masters were doing the job justice.

Meanwhile, I kept dreaming with Harald Müller of breaking the drift record in Turkey. Years later we did it with a club, and although a very large audience didn't hear about it, we set it on another July day, in Samsun in 2014. With the record certified by Guinness, we put Samsun's name on the world map.

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Yes, today Turkey is attracting more interest in drifting than in many other motorsports. The biggest factor is that the cars are the ones we see on the streets and that young people dream of owning. Rear-wheel-drive cars that are easy to buy and the greater freedom in modification also increase the interest. There are no restrictions on the look of the cars either, and the drift drivers are very likeable. We see this in the fan base they have built in a short time.

These youngsters have built, in a very short time, a fan base that many rally or circuit racing drivers have failed to build over years. That is because they all came from the streets and are still closely connected to the crowd we call the street scene. Handing out signed posters to fans after every event tires them out more than competing does.

Drifting was previously held as a local championship, but this year the Turkish Drift Championship will be run for the first time. The calendar for the four-round championship is as follows:

2016 Turkish Drift Championship: 9–10 April, İzmir Park, DRİFT KULÜBÜ. 28–29 May, Olympic Stadium, DRİFT KULÜBÜ. 25–26 June, Körfez Race Circuit, DRİFT KULÜBÜ. 22–23 October, Istanbul Park, FESTİVAL.

So this is where a small dream has led. Yes, I dreamed, and I did something for drifting. Of course, I wasn't the only one dreaming. Drifting is the work of a very large team. They are all doing great things in different places: friends, rivals, colleagues and sometimes even enemies. But they are all part of one big organisation striving to spread this sport across Turkey, and all of them take to the track less to win than simply to compete.

I will introduce you to this big world. Sometimes a race, a driver, a car, and sometimes even a bit of gossip...

Ahmet Said Özen
asaozen@gmail.com