Racist attacks on Kurdish football team during match

Banners showing a white Renault Taurus and "Yeşil."

Click to read the article in Turkish (1) (2) (3)

Players of Amedspor, a football team based in the Kurdish-majority province of Diyarbakır, were targeted in racist attacks ahead of and during yesterday's (March 5) game against Bursaspor.

The attacks started on Saturday when some Bursaspor supporters gathered and chanted slogans outside the hotel where the Amedspor players and staff were staying.

Ahead of the game, fans on the grandstand began chanting slogans when Amedspor players took to the field to warm up. Tensions also rose between the players of the two teams.

While Amedspor players were returning to the locker room, fans on the stands threw various objects at them, including plastic bottles and firecrackers.

Selahattin Yıldırım, president of Amedspor, told bianet, "Throughout the game, objects including knives, bullets, pieces of iron, and water bottles were thrown onto the field, the referee almost waited for someone to die, he did not stop the game."

A video released by Amedspor showing the attacks:

Sahaya koltuklar atılıyor maytaplar atılıyor ama hakem hala maçı yönetiyor telefonunuz kapalıydı? @TFF_Org #Amedsporyanlızdeğildir #Amedspor pic.twitter.com/GPRLFCCVdY

— AMED SK (@AmedsporSK) March 5, 2023

Banners

On the stands, there were banners making reference to the 1990s' conflict in the country's predominantly Kurdish-majority regions in the 1990s. One of the banners showed Mahmut Yıldırım, also known by the alias "Yeşil" (Green), a former intelligence officer held responsible for dozens of extrajudicial killings in that period.

Another banner showed a white Renault Taurus, which has become a symbol of the enforced disappearances in that period as many people would be put in those cars when being abducted.

The referees did not postpone the game despite the incidents. Bursaspor won the match 2-1. The clubs compete in the White Group of the Second League, the third level in the country's football league system.

A fan with a slingshot:

Stadyuma sapanla girip futbolcularımızı böyle yaralamaya çalıştılar.. Sözün bittiği yer.#Amedsporyalnızdeğildir pic.twitter.com/WvvmMYek4C

— AMED SK (@AmedsporSK) March 5, 2023

After the game, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced that the officials responsible for the appearance of the banners were suspended from duty and investigations were opened against them.

"The images outside of football during the football match in Bursa are unacceptable and cannot be associated with sports," he wrote on Twitter.

Over the years, Amedspor faced racist attacks during many away games, with those responsible mostly getting away with the attacks. Also, its fans were banned from attending away games most of the time.

Reactions

Politicians and lawyers reacted strongly to the incidents, criticizing the authorities for paving the paw for such attacks by not effectively investigating similar incidents before.

In a written statement, the Kurdish issue-focused Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) described the display of banners as a "disgrace."

"This climate of racism, fascism and hatred is not the plan of a handful of supporters," the party said, adding that all the officials from the football federation to the police were responsible.

"Those who make a tempest in a teapot because of 'Government, resign' [slogans] keep silent in the face of blatant racism," the party said, referring to last week's protests against the government during the games in the Super League.

In a joint statement, 14 bar associations in the country's Kurdish-majority east and southeast expressed solidarity with Amedspor and called on the authorities to punish those responsible for the incidents.

"As can be understood from their content, these attacks targeted not only Amedspot but also all segments of the public, especially the Kurdish people," said the bars.

"We express our solidarity with Amedspor, which has been subjected to hate attacks, and demand that the authorities take preventive measures against all kinds of racist and discriminatory approaches and hate speech and that an effective investigation is carried out against these acts that poison social peace, and that those responsible and perpetrators of negligence are punished." (RT/VK)