You don’t exactly have to be a financial boffin to know the Premier League was the biggest player in the transfer market this summer.The 20 clubs from England’s top tier spent a colossal/morally reprehensible (depending on your point of view) €4.1billion (£3.5bn; $4.8bn) between the official start of player trading on June 15 and Tuesday’s deadline. According to figures from Transfermarkt, that translated to a collective net spend of just over €1.5bn. There’s a big drop-off to the league in second, which, not entirely surprisingly, is Italy’s Serie A, on €419m.However, it might be more of a surprise that the next European country on the list, with a collective net spend of €278million, is Turkey.The Turkish Super Lig is ranked ninth in UEFA’s coefficient list, behind the top flights in Belgium, Portugal and the Netherlands, and only just ahead of Poland’s Ekstraklasa. Its highest-ranked individual club are Fenerbahce in 27th place, with Galatasaray 46th and Besiktas way down in 151st.This is not, with the greatest respect, an absolutely elite league, yet it spends like one. And this summer, Turkish clubs have spent with gusto.Few football countries, as a collective, love a big-name signing as much as Turkey. There’s an old saying in Turkish football that ‘fans think titles are won at the airport’: i.e., the bigger the name they can flock to greet in frenzied fashion from their incoming flights, the more likely their club are to succeed.But it feels like this has been a particularly extraordinary transfer window, even by Turkish football’s standards.Three of the top-five fees ever paid by its clubs have come this summer: Galatasaray signed Rafael Leao for €38million, Fenerbahce spent €39m on Mason Greenwood and Besiktas made Orkun Kokcu’s loan from Benfica permanent for €30m.But those bare facts barely scratch the surface.It began in July when Besiktas pulled off something of a coup by signing Arsenal’s Leandro Trossard, fresh from winning the Premier League and starting in the Champions League final. Trossard might not be the biggest name in world football, but he was a key man in the club’s first title in 22 years. Going to the Super Lig felt like a big, and probably premature, step down. A few weeks later, Besiktas signed Dusan Vlahovic as a free agent after his departure from Juventus.Fenerbahce got in on the act by recruiting Nathan Ake from Manchester City and Greenwood from Marseille, bluntly unconcerned by the latter’s past. Greenwood being charged with rape and sexual assault in 2022, charges which he denied and which were dropped in 2023, make a career in his homeland of England look problematic but the former Manchester United striker’s arrival was greeted rapturously.Not only were there no significant protests from Fenerbahce fans about Greenwood’s signing and limited mention of the case in the media, but he was used as an active tool in the summer’s presidential elections — candidate Hakan Safi bragging that he had already agreed a deal with the forward. The eventual winner, Aziz Yildirim, did sign Greenwood, and he has performed well on the pitch so far, so it seems now that people care even less about his past.Later in the window, Fenerbahce snagged a really big fish, signing Romelu Lukaku from Napoli for a fairly modest €6million, a fee that reflects his age (33) and recent fitness record: he made just five Serie A appearances last season and was only fit enough to start one of Belgium’s six games at the World Cup. The striker may be past his prime, but Fenerbahce hope he can have the same impact for them as Victor Osimhen did for Istanbul rivals Galatasaray, something they also hoped for Jhon Duran when signing him last summer. That one didn’t go to plan.Victor Osimhen has been a huge success in Turkey with Galatasaray (Ahmad Mora/Getty Images)Lukaku, Ake and Greenwood joined a squad that already featured Ederson, Matteo Guendouzi, Marco Asensio, N’Golo Kante, Nelson Semedo and Milan Skriniar. Peak Super Lig.