Turkish sporting giants Besiktas JK on Sunday night named Cypriot businessman Serdal Adali as the club’s new chairman.

Adali secured a club record total of 8,901 votes among the club’s members, beating the club’s acting chairman Huseyin Yucel, who received 3,637 votes.

Speaking after being elected, he said he is “aware of the duty we have taken on and the responsibility on our shoulders”, and promised to “carry Besiktas to better days” and to “bring this great community together again”.

He was born in the southern Turkish city of Adana in 1964, as his father, Hasan Adali, was working as a translator and site manager at an under-construction dam in the area.

Hasan Adali was born in Kyrenia in 1929, while according to both Turkish public broadcaster TRT and newspaper Kibris, Serdal Adali holds a Republic of Cyprus passport.

He followed in his father’s footsteps into the construction sector, before also working in the tourism sector, and also becoming a competitive jockey in 1980 and joining the Turkish Jockey Club.

He became the Turkish Jockey Club’s chairman in 2012, and also began working in administrative roles within Besiktas JK in 2010, serving as its football committee chairman between 2010 and 2011 and as club vice chairman between 2018 and 2019.

Based in Istanbul, Besiktas JK is a giant of Turkish sports, and is most well-known for its football team, which is one of Turkey’s “big three”, alongside Fenerbahce and Galatasaray.

The football team has won 21 league titles, most recently in 2021, and last season won both the Turkish Cup and Super Cup, despite slumping to a disappointing sixth place in the Super League.

Besiktas have never played a competitive match in Cyprus, despite having been drawn against Nicosia-based outfit Apoel in the 1986/87 European Cup.

However, according to newspaper Phileleftheros, Apoel faced “pressure from the government of the day, led by Spyros Kyprianou, and the church’s leadership”, and as such never travelled to Turkey.

Besiktas were handed a 3-0 walkover victory, and the second leg, due to be played at the old GSP Stadium in Nicosia, never took place. Apoel were initially handed a two-year ban from European competitions by governing body Uefa, though this was commuted to a single year.

Since then, Turkish and Cypriot teams facing off against each other in European competitions has become normalised, with Fenerbahce and Aek Larnaca being the most recent example in October 2022. Fenerbahce won 2-1 in Larnaca and 2-0 in Istanbul.