Silifke Belediyespor

That intimacy suits Silifke Belediyespor, a club run through the town's municipal offices in Göksu Mahallesi rather than through any grand headquarters of its own.

The team traces back to 1964 as Silifkespor. It took its present name in 2014, when the municipality took it under its wing, and for a spell in 2015 a sponsorship deal had it playing as Medcem Silifke Belediyespor. In 2015-16 it went through the entire Mersin Süper Amatör Lig without losing, a season it capped by winning the league outright, and repeated the title four years later.

The bigger leap came in 2022-23. Silifke reached the Bölgesel Amatör Lig play-off final against Viranşehir Belediyespor and won it on penalties, 12-11, and with it the club climbed into the 3. Lig for the first time since the early 1990s. Locals still call the players the Blue Crabs, a nod to the coastline the town sits on, even though the shirts themselves are red and blue rather than blue alone.

Tufan Esin came up through the club's own academy in the late 1990s, left for a career around Turkish football's lower and middle tiers, and came back to finish it at Silifke Belediyespor in 2014-15.

Anamur Belediyespor remains the fixture that matters most locally, billed along the coast as the Mersin Derby. For now, the task in front of Silifke is simpler: hold its place in the fourth tier after the jump it took getting there.