The crumbling of the Turkish Dream – The demise of Space Soldiers

The team was the home for Ismailcan “XANTARES” Dörtkardeş since 2014 and added Engin “ngiN” Kor and Ahmet “paz” Karahoca in 2016 and rounded up the roster with Engin “MAJ3R” Küpeli & Buğra “Calyx” in 2017.

This team was doing well for itself and had talented players, Ismailcan “XANTARES” Dörtkardeş who was dubbed as a “machine”. In their tenure, the team won the 2018 edition of DreamHack Austin, The Europe Minor Championship for the 2018 Boston Major, ESEA Season 25: Global Challenge and many other tournaments.

However, little did we know what was going on behind the scenes. The players were signed to the organisation for very low salaries and were not paid enough for their own sustenance and the long term goals of the players did not match with the organisation. Hence, the players decided to part ways with the organisation on October 13th,2018. In a statement from the players, they said that “We would like to thank the family of Space Soldiers for the support and encouragement they have shown to us players so far. It was a great pleasure to be a part of this organization.” said the ex-Space Soldiers players. However, our long term plans did not match with the Space Soldiers organization. Therefore, we players announce our separation from the organization. Thanks to everyone who passionately supported us.

Photo: HLTV

The dream began falling apart when XANTARES departed the roster and joined the 6 man roster of BIG. Space Soldiers tried to stick together and added Yaman “yam” Ergenekon to complete the roster.

The players still wanted to stick together as a team and decided to continue playing under the ex-Space Soldier banner and were still passionate about the game and did so by travelling 2000 km to Prague with yam instead of XANTARES to play in lower pings on the 14th December of 2018 for the Europe Minor which would put them on road to IEM Katowice.

The roster was plagued with multiple issues and saw Engin “ngiN” Kor leaving the active roster and saw the addition of Ömer “imoRR” Karataş to fill in the void left by ngiN in the team. The same happened with Engin “MAJ3R” Küpel who went on to join the new LDLC project with Happy, the French Veteran.

However, there was no coming back from that point and Yaman “yam” Ergenekon left the roster and Buğra “Calyx” Arkın announced that he was open for new challenges, away from the ex-Space Soldiers roster.

With most players joining other projects, the then prominent Turkish roster is now down to:

  • Ahmet “paz” Karahoca
  • Buğra “Calyx” Arkın (open to offers)
  • Ömer “imoRR” Karataş

Photo courtesy of HLTV