Süleyman Seba Statue Unveiled

The statue of our legendary and honorary President Süleyman Seba, commissioned by Beşiktaş Municipality, has been unveiled with a special ceremony. Celebrities from political, art and sports world attended the ceremony. The statue is placed at Vişnezade Park which is situated across our Administration Building in Akaretler.

In addition to our President Yıldırım Demirören, Deniz Baykal, the Chairman of Republican People’s Party, İsmail Ünal, the Mayor of Beşiktaş Municipality, Şenes Erzik, the UEFA Vice-President, our ex-President Serdar Bilgili, the President of Fenerbahçe, Aziz Yıldırım and the President of Galatasaray Adnan Polat also took part in the ceremony.
  
Süleyman Seba, whose name became eternal with the statute, gave an emotional speech during the ribbon cutting:
“I spent almost all of my 82 years in Akaretler and Beşiktaş Club. Nearly 70 years ago, at this time of the day, we were playing football with our friends in this park. Now they are erecting my statue in the same place. What an honor… Looking back to our more than 100 years old history, we see that past administrators and players have saved no effort to bring our club to these present days. Everyone has strived to do his or her own share and contributed to the greatness of our club. That’s exactly what we tried to do.  In our 16 years in office, we won 21 cups for our club. It was a total team effort. This statue would be here today without the help of others. So this statue also represents all those contributors who have made these 21 cups possible. With this opportunity, I sincerely want to thank sculptor Neslihan Pala, İsmail Ünal, the Mayor of Beşiktaş and the members of Beşiktaş Municipality for their unlimited support. I am always proud to be a Beşiktaş fan and this feeling will remain with me as long as I live.”

Deniz Baykal, the Chairman of Republican People’s Party also spoke in the ceremony, “We are gathered here today, to pass on the legend of Suleyman Seba to next generations. In fact, he is a real model for all of us and we appreciate all his achievements.”
Ismail Unal, the Mayor of Beşiktaş also took the floor and said: “When we informed him of the project he told us to unveil the statute of Baba Hakkı (Hakkı Yeten) first. As we have promised, we will erect the statue of Baba Hakkı next to his in very near future. During the life of project, I had a chance to get to know him better. I think he definitely deserves a place in Şairler Sofası of Akaretler among the statues of famous Turkish poets such as Behçet Necatigil, Cahit Sıktı Tarancı, Orhan Veli, Oktay Rıfat, Nigar Hanım and Melih Cevdet Anday that are all situated in the poets’ corner of the park until eternity.”