Ezelî Rekabet

Players of Galatasaray and  Fenerbahçe (in stripes) mingle in 1913. 
Unthinkable as it may seem now there were plans at the time to merge the 2 clubs . The new club was to be called Türkkulübü. The plans fizzled out during the Balkan Wars and the Transcontinental neighbours have now enjoyed their fierce rivalry for 107 years. 

Football...seems to rouse him as nothing else can.

The Lancashire Daily Post 06.06.34

23.02.34: Fenerbahçe v Galatasaray. Nominally a friendly, the match descended into chaos.

Zeki Rıza Sporel

Zeki on the attack against Galatasaray

Zeki Rıza Sporel joined Fenerbahçe as a youth, making his first team debut at 18. In a remarkable 19 year career for the club he scored 470 goals in 352 first team appearances .

Zeki played 16 internationals between 1923 (Turkey's first) and 1927. He scored 15 international goals and was captain on 10 occasions. 

Turkey-The Istanbul Sunday League

HMS Imogene FC 1904-05

 Cadi-keuy FC 1905-06

Cadi-keuy FC 1906-07

 

 Moda FC 1907-1908

Galatasaray SK 1908-09

Galatasaray SK 1909-10

 

Galatasaray SK 1910-11

 Fenerbahçe SK 1911-12

 

 Fenerbahçe SK 1913-14

The Istanbul Sunday League was started in 1904 and was the first football league in Turkey. With Turks legally barred from playing football, foreign influence, particularly British and Greek, was great. In fact, the first ever winners of the Istanbul Sunday League were HMS Imogene FC, drawn from the crew of a British naval vessel. By 1906 more familiar names were appearing: Galatasaray won 3 titles in a row up to 1911, followed by the first triumph of their arch rivals Fenerbahçe. 

Turkey

When on a military posting to Izmir  in 1898 Fuat Hüsnü Kayacan (above) became the first Turkish man to play football.
 Football was played in  Thessaloniki and Izmir as early as 1875. F.C. Smyrna (Izmir) was the first football  club in Turkey. The game appeared in Istanbul in 1895. As The Ottoman Empire prohibited Turkish people from playing, these early sides were made up of wealthy English, Greek and Armenian expats.
In 1901 Fuat Hüsnü Kayacan was instrumental in forming a club called  Black Stockings FC  for Turkish players, but the police curtailed their activities and their one and only fixture, against Greek opposition, was abandoned.
Historians of Fenerbahçe identify Black Stockings FC as their predecessors. Fuat Hüsnü Kayacan had connections with all the major clubs in Istanbul at the time, being influential at both Fenerbahçe and Galatasary.

In 1908 football for Turkish subjects was decriminalised.