More than 46,000 women and children filled Sukru Saracoglu Stadium to watch Fenerbahce play against Manisapor in a Turkish Super League match in Istanbul on Tuesday night, 21st September, 2011.
The Turkish authorities came up with this radical solution for tackling crowd violence at football matches – ban the men and let only women and children in. Under new rules approved by Turkey’s football association, only women and children under the age of 12 will be admitted to watch games – for free – involving teams which have been sanctioned for unruly behaviour by their fans.
Fenerbahce were ordered to play two home matches without any spectators after their fans invaded the pitch during a friendly against Ukrainian champions Shakhtar Donetsk.
It was the first time in history of football that a crowd so large comprised only women and children and I would certainly have liked to have been there. It must have been great!! 🙂
Read more:
- Turkish football bans men from some matches
- After having watched more than 41,000 women and children cheering wildly and waving club-colored flags in a packed stadium, Turkish soccer authorities want more of the same.
Dear Avant-garde Civil Activists,
I was advised to erase the names from your comment as I have no proof that your given information is correct and you are a reliable source. However, I have checked the Internet and inquired with knowledgeable football supporters, and it seems to me that you are simply summarizing public knowledge and therefore I’m not obliged to delete your comment. However, the advice which was given to me is that even if there is a right for publicity there is also a general right of privacy, and therefore I was advised to better self-censor my blog for my own protection as I would hate to be faced with fines or recriminations.
Sincere apologies,
Soccerwidow
A very different opinion and view on the Fenerbahçe match indeed. However, I’m not entirely sure if Soccerwidow is the right medium to discuss political issues in Turkey (or anywhere else in the world).
Soccerwidow is a private website which is run by a “real soccerwidow” and looks at football, betting maths and underlying statistics. The news about the Fenerbahçe match was included here as I found it very weird to imagine only women filling a stadium. It was for me a curiosity in football like finding most of the Ugandan men supporting English football.
I must honestly admit that after reading this exhaustive comment I was wondering if I should remove it as I don’t know if any of the allegations in the comment are true and which are not. However, on the other hand, I strongly believe in freedom of speech and thoughts and therefore I have decided to leave the comment untouched and trust that my readers who know more about FIFA and UEFA politics than I do are intelligent enough to have their own opinion.
However, should anybody feel that above comment needs clarification or even removing then please kindly let me know. Do I need to point out that the opinion in above comment does NOT reflect my personal views?
Why Did 41.000 Women And Children Fill Soccer Stadium ?
Dear editor,
The on-going operation so called “match-fixing probe” in Turkey follows a path against universal law, basic human rights and principles of justice. Therefore we as Turkish football fans requested UEFA to ease our worries. But sadly it became evident that the governing body of European football has been manipulated against Fenerbahçe Club which stands as the main target of this attack starting from the 3rd of July this year. UEFA ruled against Fenerbahçe without considering the injustices in this investigation moreover they are now threatening the ones who stand against their unfair ruling.
Turkish football is in a deep problem of autonomy which is known to be a must for UEFA and FIFA. However UEFA is now being manipulated by those who violate the autonomy of Turkish football, namely the ruling political power.
The Turkish football federation has always been under the influence of politicians. The current vice president of TFF was elected with the help of political power after losing the election of Turkish Basketball Federation and now he is executing this post for the 3rd term in a row.
For the last two years the political interference has become unprecedented. In the second half of the 2009-2010 season for the benefit of team B and last year for team T, bureaucrats even ministers tried to manipulate the tough race for championship with their public statements. The ex sports minister XXX is one of them. He had ignored the phone recordings and files about match-fixing in 2004 and together with TFF made the case exceed the period of prescription. In 2006 he made another file closed by stating: “According to my judicial background I can say that those files in the hands of police are invalid.” However the case was very evident, there was a spending in the account papers of a club undefined, the amount was the exact number which was said to be given to the opponents for fixing games. Police has asked for the invoice of that amount and the club has sent only some newspaper copies instead of an invoice.
State minister YYY is an ex team T president and a mp of the same city. He has stated that government has allocated 27 million $ for team T from the state budget. Last season according to the fixture each week team T played those teams that played against team F 2 weeks earlier. Meanwhile protocols were signed with team G, team K about the new stadiums to be build in their cities by the government, casting a scene of almost open bribery. In fact the last election was much more surprising. At the beginning, there were two candidates one of which was officially declared. He was the ex-General Director of Youth and Sport, Mr M, who has been prepared for this office for almost 1.5 year. The other was the vice president of the Union of the Football Clubs, Mr G.
Mr G was the niece of PM Mr R’s wife and also the president of IBB (Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality-which is in the hands of the ruling party AKP-) football club. However one other candidate came out of the blue just before the election; Mr M. In a week or so Mr G withdrew and joined the list of Mr M. And Mr M also stepped back silently. According to the news it was understood that PM Mr R had endorsed Mr M’s name to the presidents of the big clubs. As a result an election with one candidate was held under the influence of political authority and shortly after came the match-fixing investigation which was understood to be known by these political authorities prior to its start up.
UEFA considers Turkish Football Association as modern and autonomous but Turkish football suffers from political interventions for years. Our leagues are full of municipality backed up teams. These municipalities are run by the ruling party, budgets and finance resources are controlled by the government. In the election of Football Association these municipality teams’ delegations who have political identities are a major force.
We would like to take your attention here: Investigation was started by judicial authority on the ground of criminal law. Turkish Football Association opened disciplinary inquiry of its own only after some weeks. Yet they preferred to rest upon the judicial investigation and they have been holding their inquiry under the strong influence of police and the prosecutor.
Through this investigation which was started on July 3, most of the basic human rights like presumption of innocence, defence and fair trial were violated by the media. Although the investigation is assumed to be confidential, some fake evidences which included modified videos and phone tapes were leaked to the media by the police itself. From the first day media ignored the rule of law and also UEFA and judged and executed on its own! Although the prosecutor is also obliged to defend the rights of the suspects, it was understood that non of the evidences in favor of the suspects were held. As it is seen the way the police and the prosecution acts is against domestic and international law and regulations.
So all we have is an investigation initiated by police and held by a “court with exclusive powers” which is prohibited by international law. Currently the indictment is not even ready. Every day a new development occurs. The revelations which are said to be made by some people under arrest or custody are denied by their lawyers. It’s also said that more evidences have still been collected although this investigation is known to get started 8 months ago and its match-fixing leg was initiated 3 months ago. Continuously new people are called for testimony, new files from past years which were never opened are added to this case. At the centre of the charges we see team F president Mr A accused of organised crime and match fixing mixed together.
Every single person in this country knows that this is a political operation against Mr A for two reasons:
1: Political power has asked team F to leave the league title to team T to gain more votes in the K region where T city is located. But Mr A denied this request!
2: Mr A is a big contractor in the field of defence industry. A 4 billion $ contract was won by his firm at the expense of a politically backed up company so they wanted to seal his faith by this operation to keep him away from these contracts permanently.
At first Turkish Football Association could not get the files since the investigation was so-called confidential then the prosecution violated the law one more time and gave the files to the association but denied defense lawyers. The files given to the association were picked out by the police, as it was leaked to the press they were only full of evidences and questions against suspects. At the time being individuals and clubs do not know what they are officially accused of. After persistent objections and statements that the case would be carried to UEFA and FIFA, defence lawyers were allowed just to read the investigation files under certain circumstances decided by the prosecutor. They were not allowed to keep the files and make assessments with their clients. So the Turkish Football Association is pushed to make a decision with problematic police findings based on mere suspicion under the pressure of media and manipulated public opinion. Some administrators of the rival clubs who were promised to win some energy contracts by politicians leaked some manipulative information to UEFA to have Fenerbahce banned. And they succeeded.
After team F’s victory politicians tried to appeal to the city of T. State minister Mr F is an ex team T president and a mp of the same city. He has stated that government has allocated 27 million $ for team T from the state budget. He also said to the locals: “ Be patient!” meaning there will be more to come.
It was understood that investigations was delayed not to effect general elections. TFF president Mr M said: “Prosecutor told me that they knew the results of Fenerbahce’s last 5 matches, the evidences are very strong.” This statement showed that some people could have easily made millions through betting and noone seems to want to investigate this aspect of this case.. After Mr A reported the prosecutor to a higher court he ruled a media ban and denied his statement.
All of these make this investigation untrustful. Prosecutor ignores the acts against universal human rights and no other tries to stop this.
In recent years the operations against people who are against ruling political power are almost identical. It all starts with a denunciation from an unnamed source. After that politically manipulated police, prosecutor and court starts an investigation. Meanwhile some embedded journalists begin to visit tv channels one by one with the aim of discredit the target in public eye. They were all successful till now. People now started to walk the streets to support their club and president.
They wanted to take away their one and only true love. Those people marching in the streets has seen the dirty plans against their club but never given in. This time the attack was highly organised and the underlying aim was to place certain people who are in touch with political power in team F’s management. But people saw this dirty game. Thousands gathered to go to the camp site in Topuk heights to show their support to the footballers. Another morning thousands paraded in front of the jailhouse where their beloved president for 13 years has been kept. Another day came a record selling in the shop under their stadium after a campaign was held to help the struggling club financially. Again thousands came together in front of their stadium just to shout and support from outside when they were banned to enter.
And on September 20th 2011 41.000 women and children made history in the match against Manisaspor to cry out against injustices that their team and president had to face. As Fenerbahce got more supports, some people got angry threatening fans on tv: “if you don’t give up Mr A you will harm your club.” Moreover the media of a very strong religious community threatened TFF saying: ”If you don’t relegate Fenerbahçe your doom will be like those soldiers’ in jail.” Fenerbahçe supporters never got surprised when they heard Mr. A an international ex-referee saying how their domestic rivals once fixed a game against Manchester U. because they were aware of their dirty businesses in home and abroad. But they were stunned when UEFA ruled Fenerbahçe out of Champions League taking team T in cause team T were under investigation too.
I am sharing this information with you because in my opinion this operation is not clearly understood abroad. Please reconsider your news sources in Turkey for they can manipulate you easily. Most of them are embedded journalists under the influence of the ruling party.
According to 2009 reports, in Turkey 54 of 100 cases were resulted as not guilty. This statistics is 5 in 100 in Europe. Here are some samples from Turkish justice history: 2 Leeds United fans “ Mr K and Mr C” stabbed to death, perpetrators get 6 years in jail. 5 Russian tourist guides killed by surrogate alcohol, prosecutor asks for 5 years in jail for perpetrators.
Can you trust this system?
This dirty operation will be fully understood when it goes to European Court of Human Rights. Therefore politicians will be trying to delay the procedures as much as they can. Probably their aim is to keep Mr A who is chronically ill in jail till his likely death then drop the case and leave the club heavily damaged.
FIFA is now investigating those who claim to be working to clean Turkish football for national match fixing. There was a panic when an ex club president confessed this fixing. Along with some media personalities, politicians and TFF members of that period try to cover this claim by agitating nationalist feelings.
We kindly ask that you do not reveal our identity due to the media’s aggressive trend of smear campaigning and carrying out offensive reporting about individuals.
Avant-garde Civil Activists
Istanbul , TURKEY