Two Kurdish football teams won matches on Sunday, with Erbil SC winning against al-Kahrabaa SC in the Iraq Stars League, while Amedspor won its first match in the Super League against Erzurumspor with a score of 3-0.

“This victory is a source of joy and hope for the future,” Omed Khoshnaw, Governor of Erbil, said in a statement congratulating Erbil SC. “We assure them that, as always, we will remain by their side, supporting and backing them.”

Read More: Kurdish Club Secures Promotion to Top Turkish Football Competition

In May, Amedspor secured promotion to the highest Turkish football league, also known as the Super League, leading to mass celebrations among Kurds.

The match against Erzurumspor was attended by high-level Turkish officials such as the Türkiye’s Minister of Interior Mustafa Çiftçi, as well as numerous members of parliament and representatives of civil society organizations and political parties.

Two days before the match, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hosted the two teams for a reception to congratulate them and wish them success for the first match of this year’s Super League.

The match took place in Diyarbakır, also known as Amed, a Kurdish city in southeastern Turkey that is widely regarded as the informal capital of the country’s Kurdish minority. During the match, fans of the teams shouted a line from a famous poem by Cegerxwîn later immortalized by Kurdish singer Sivan Perwer: “Who are we? We are Kurds.”

Amedspor rose to the top of the league as a result of the match.