¶7. (C) A fellow Trabzon contractor and Trabzonspor board member describes Ozak as coming from the Sufi (mystical) line of the Milli Gorus Islamist movement; he is a quiet, reserved, obedient Erdogan man. As part of Erdogan's strategy to use sports to maintain AKP's grassroots support, and in the wake of AKP's defeat in the Trabzon mayoral race in March 2004, the Istanbul-Black Sea axis which forms Erdogan's Istanbul power base reportedly subsequently succeeded in having Ozak appointed Trabzonspor chairman of the board. At the same time Erdogan reportedly agreed to transfer several million dollars from one of the Prime Ministry's hidden reserves to permit Trabzonspor under Ozak to purchase better players. Our contacts expect Ozak to be relatively more upright than Ergezen was (not a high bar).
