Italian artist posts drawing in solidarity with Amedspor

Italian comic journalist and political activist Gianluca Costantini posted a drawing on Twitter on Wednesday in protest against the racist harassment and attacks against the football team of Amedspor over the weekend in Turkey's western city of Bursa.

Footballers of @AmedsporSK, the football team of the Kurdish-majority province of #Diyarbakır, have been subjected to several racist attacks before, in, and after a Turkish second league match against @BursasporSk in the latter’s stadium. https://t.co/mYLIlY9Ux1

— Gianluca Costantini (@channeldraw) March 9, 2023

He said on Twitter:

"Footballers of @AmedsporSK, the football team of the Kurdish-majority province of #Diyarbakır, have been subjected to several racist attacks before, in, and after a Turkish second league match against @BursasporSk in the latter's stadium."

The football team of Amedspor was targeted in Bursa before and during a football game on Sunday.

First, the team was harassed upon its arrival in Bursa late Saturday by a group who chanted racist slogans outside the hotel the team was staying.

The next day, some players of rival Bursaspor and some Bursaspor fans reportedly made an attempt to attack Amedspor's players before the game, and later during the game the poster of a white Renault station wagon, the type of car known to have been widely used in covert operations of state forces in 1990's to abduct and disappear Kurdish political activists, and the poster of Mahmut Yildirim, a notorious executioner for the state's death squads, were raised by some Bursaspor fans.

Constantini earlier in late August 2022 drew on a wall in Istanbul the picture of the Kurdish father who was handed the remains of his son in a sack seven years after he went missing.