XANTARES: Consider moving to EU

Day two of the HTC 2v2 Invitational gave us the opportunity to talk to Turkish star Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş, who is soon heading into the second semi-final of PGL's tournament where he and Buğra "⁠Calyx⁠" Arkın will face Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard and Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač.

The Turkish scene has become worse following the disbandment of DarkPassage

Read on to find out what the Turk had to say about the laid-back event, the pick-up of Calyx, state of the local scene, and Space Soldiers' future:

How did XANTARES and Calyx get picked for the tournament? Was it a team decision?

PGL asked directly for XANTARES and Calyx.

How are they liking the tournament and the atmosphere in the studio?

It’s more like a gathering. Everyone is having fun and chilling, the environment PGL has here is really fun and everyone is comfortable, like you’re at home, and the results aren’t as important here.

But you still want to win.

Of course, we came here to win, but we are humble people. We will fight in the server and we respect all the players, they are all top players, but in the server we will do our best to win every game.

With Calyx coming into Space Soldiers, how has it changed? Has he helped the team progress?

Calyx is a very young and talented player. Everybody on our team knows him, but we never had a chance to play with him. When we created the Turkish national team last year we tried the best possible variations.

TWC 2016 was our first tournament with him, in the team with MAJ3R, paz, XANTARES, and DESPE. There we saw what he is actually capable of. We were like “ok, he’s a good player,” but he’s inexperienced. The crowd was very close to the stage and they were cheering for Argentina and he was too nervous. He couldn’t control his emotions and we tried to calm him down. He was too stressed and too nervous.

When we went back to Turkey we were thinking that maybe we could pick him up. Then when the time came, the players asked if it would be possible to ask him to come. We sent a letter to Dark Passage, his organization at the time, and they said no. After his contract expired, Calyx told us he wanted to come, and after talks we brought him on the team.

He is very talented, but comparing to our players he is a bit inexperienced. That’s why we sent him to Copenhagen Games with Space Academy. We wanted him to go to tournaments and gain experience.

What made XANTARES decide to stay in Turkey and develop his game with Space Soldiers?

Teams like G2, NiP, fnatic, they belong to a specific country. I want to achieve something with my Turkish colleagues and to develop the Turkish scene.

And how is the Turkish scene doing now?

It’s really bad, actually. There’s only one team, us. There was Dark Passage before, but they just disbanded. We were the only teams trying to compete and earn our position in the European scene. That’s why we’re trying to focus on the global scene.

What do you think it will take to make it to the next level, and make it to bigger tournaments?

We have lots of issues playing from Turkey. We have some political issues. The internet is blocked, and we get loss and choke, which people don’t know about. Our pings are higher, and so on. It’s not an excuse, but now traveling and experiencing playing in different places we noticed it is different, and we can see the difference.

We are confident we can compete with top teams, but compared to them we have a lot to learn and a lot to experience. We know our place. We just need to do good in qualifiers.

We are going to go to Germany next week to do a bootcamp, and we will play some qualifiers from there to see how it goes playing with better connections. If it’s good for us, if our biggest problem was that we couldn’t make it playing online from Turkey, then we will consider moving the team to Europe, but first we need to test it.

We lost some matches in qualifiers against big teams, like against Virtus.pro for a spot at ECS, and so on. We aren't upset about it, because we respect all the teams, and we will get there. We are taking it slowly but surely.

MAJ3R told us that you should get more invites, do you agree with that?

I agree with MAJ3R. We just need a chance to showcase ourselves. I’m not saying they should invite us into huge tournaments, but somewhere we can show our strength and our spirit. Just a chance.

Would you like to have any last words?

Yeah, thanks to HLTV for the interview, and to all the people that cheer for us and support us, and thanks to Space Soldiers.