Yes, I’ve experienced. It is about ethnicity. There are different ethnicities in our country. Each one has its language. Also, each ethnic group speaks Turkish with its specific accent.

In 2012, I attended a tennis tournament in Antalya. There were many tennis players from different cities. There were no problems in the first days. Then some of my teammates laughed at other athletes who spoke with an accent. Worse still, the parents of my teammates also laughed at them, instead of warning their children for their misbehavior.

I saw some of my team mates stare and snicker at other players who speak with an accent. Body languages ​​were disturbing. They also used verbally provocative words.Prejudice and attitudes affect radicalization.

Yes, I tried to stop them. I talked to my teammates and told them that their behavior was wrong. My teammates did not behave in the same way again. My words positively affected their behavior. Someone else wasn’t involved. Maybe they didn’t notice the misbehavior of players.

Yes, I felt. I hesitated before talking to my friends. I couldn’t guess whether they would accept their behavior was wrong. I gathered my courage and spoke to them. What I said was useful, and they didn’t act like that again. Actually, I expected to receive support from their parents. I did not receive any support from them.
In my opinion, it is the wrong behavior to be ridiculed by a person’s appearance, speech, and ethnic identity. What bothers me is that parents approve the improper behavior of their children.  They laughed together with their children and condoned their behavior.

My teammates didn’t repeat the same attitude but didn’t apologize either. Peers can influence each other’s behavior positively or negatively. Feel free to warn your friends to any misbehaviors you have witnessed. I want to tell my peers not to be biased.I believe that if we accept people as they are, we can reduce discrimination and radicalization. I warned my friends and got positive results. I want to say that parents should be a positive example to their children and that they should not ignore their wrong behaviors.

In my opinion, discrimination and radicalization can be prevented if prejudice decreases, and the education level increases.

I was a volleyball player. None of those mentioned above types of radicalization were evident, and it was hard to notice for all of us at that time. Now, when I think of the inequality of opportunity, implicit physical and emotional violence is experienced intensively in those years. In those years, this was normal for us. I was able to describe our experiences only when I started reading about these topics.
Because we were taught that the most important rule of being a professional athlete at the time was submission to everything and working hard. The coach was the biggest and the only power. We had to do what he said. We should’ve bowed down what he did. Otherwise, we believed we could not be athletes.

It’s hard to tell a single example and a specific story. I think it would be more appropriate to define the general situation. Opportunity inequality, emotional and physical violence was a constant situation, and it was very typical for us. The talented and good athletes would play. Others had to wait mostly on the bench.
I was vaguely exposed to emotional violence. Because I was both talented, hard-working and a good player, but what I witnessed is sad. As I have written before, at that time, I was never aware of them, but now that I think of what happened in the past, I realize that it’s really sad. If I have to make a general statement about what happened in those days; I played on four different teams during my sports career, and the situation was the same in all teams.
Inequality of opportunity was experienced as follows; we were really excited to play volleyball when we were little children. However, in the training and matches, only the children who were thought to have the ability were given a chance, the others were not much interested.
In the grassroot level, especially in training, children who were not thought to be talented do not work with other children and almost never participated in the basic drills. They were not given a chance to show themselves. The athletes who were thought to be talented were not played in their favorite positions but were played in positions where they would be successful. For example, I always wanted to be a setter. I was talented. But players who were thought to be better setter than me were trained as a setter. I was trained as a spiker.
Physical violence was experienced as follows; heavy physical punishments were given after poorly played matches or mistakes made. Besides, a hundred pages would be written that we wouldn’t make that mistake again. In the grassroots level, the coach hit the player’s abdomen or forehead. There was no hit for a penalty after the grassroots level, but there were heavy physical penalties.
Emotional violence was experienced as follows; heavy insults, humiliation, ignoring the player. All the athletes who made mistakes were exposed to the above. These kinds of problems were always present, but for the reasons I wrote above, these are not the problems I have experienced so much.

As I mentioned above, I realized what was going on after I started making readings on these issues.

Unfortunately, this situation was unnoticeable to us, and it was completely normal. None of this was seen as a problem and is still not recognized. I think that the only way to deal with these problems is to educate the children, their families and the athletes in the sports environment.

As I said, I’ve almost never been exposed to these behaviors. None of us could ‘not get the support

Unfortunately, the story still does not end in the sports environment. People who have similar situations can do nothing about it. Children, families and especially the coaches need to be trained. Everybody has to change their point of view.

The only thing I can say about this is to understand the importance of education.