17 Mayıs 2013 Cuma

Match Fixing and Racism In Turkish Football

Turkish Football (soccer)  is passing through hard times since July of 2011. Some of major actors of professional Turkish Football were arrested and accused for match fixing. After nearly a year of trial Aziz Yıldırım, president of Fenerbahce SK and several others are charged and waiting for the appeal order. During all these period Turkish Football Association had carried out their own investigation and judgement procedure; finally concluding that 'there have been attempts of match fixing but none of them were successfull' and none of the clubs were sentenced. Most of the Turkish Super League Clubs attempted to trivialize the facts and supported the Turkish Football Association to spoil the code of laws and they succeeded. Now, after nearly 2 years form the beginning, most of fans, except Fenerbahçe and few others, are unhappy about the current situation and seeking for justice.





Last  weekend before the 'Fenerbahçe SK-Galatasaray SK' Derby Match at the Fenerbahçe Stadium several Fenerbahçe fans pointed bananas to Galatasaray players, Didier Drogba and Emmanuel Eboue. A day after the match  Fenerbahçe SK officials have organised a press conference and declared that the fans in the above picture were pointing the bananas to Fernando Muslera, and were not in an act of racism. Only an hour later new pictures were released to social media, invalidating their arguement.




Now the Turkish authorities, including the Turkish Government- as Turkey is a candidate of 2020 Olympics- are trying to ignore and trivialize this disgusting racism action.

I believe match fixing, racism and doping are the three poisons of  the soul of sports. The Turkish Football Association  and professionnal football clubs should stop pretending as 'three monkeys'.