AEK (sports Club) - History

History

The club was founded in 1924 in Athens by Greek refugees from Constantinople (now Istanbul) in the wake of the Greco-Turkish War and subsequent population exchange. The large Greek population of Constantinople, not unlike those of the other Ottoman urban centres, continued its athletic traditions in the form of numerous athletic clubs. Clubs such as Enosi Tataoulon (Ένωση Ταταούλων) from the Tatavla district, Megas Alexandros (Μέγας Αλέξανδρος) of Vathyriakos, and Hermes (Ερμής – Ermis) of Galata existed to promote Hellenic athletic and cultural ideals; Hermes, one of the more popular clubs, was formed in 1875 by the Greek community of Pera (Galata). Forced by the Kemalist regime to change its name to Pera Club in 1921, many of its athletes fled during the population exchanges at the end of the Greco-Turkish War, and settled in Athens and Thessaloniki.

The founders of AEK established the club with the intention of providing athletic and cultural diversions for the thousands of predominantly Constantinopolitan and Anatolian refugees who had settled in the new suburbs of Athens (Nea Filadelfeia, Nea Ionia, Nea Chalkidona, Nea Smyrni, e.t.c.).

Read more about this topic:  AEK (sports Club)

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “And now this is the way in which the history of your former life has reached my ears!” As he said this he held out in his hand the fatal letter.
    Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)

    The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)