ISTANBUL — Taksim Square bore the scars and the smells of the riot police clashing with protestors the night before. But on the outskirts of the city, out toward the airport, Unal Aysal calmly prepared last week to face his electorate.

Aysal is 72. He runs 23 businesses, building power plants in gas and electricity, and he is spreading out to construction and tourism. His baby daughter, Alin, is 14 months old, younger than his grandchildren from an earlier marriage. But the greatest demands on his time is consumed with Galatasaray.

It is his alma mater; his school, his club, his obsession.

“To be very frank with you,” Aysal said across the table in his boardroom at Galatasaray’s training center, “I considered that I was too old when they asked me to be the president. Galatasaray is not only a football club. It is a school that started in 1481, and on the sporting side, we have many academies and many, many sports.” And many debts. “Galatasaray,” he said, “is property rich. We have places across Istanbul, we have 25 million fans around the world. But when I arrived in this role in 2011, the club was $328 million in debt.” Aysal can sum up in a single word where things went wrong. “Mismanagement,” he said.

He graduated with a degree in law but made his own fortune in businesses abroad. But he is no rich granddaddy throwing his billion dollars at a team the way that Chelsea, Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain and now Monaco do. Aysal is answerable to 12,000 members who each pay money to belong to an institution that has its roots in the Galata-Sarayi (the Galata Palace) of Ottoman times.