Footbal club punished by nine-game fan ban over incidents

A sports club in Turkey has been punished by a nine-game fan ban over "spectator incidents" and "foul cheering," after its fans targeted a Kurdish football team in racist harassment and attacks before and during a game on Sunday.

Bursa Sports Club (Bursaspor) was subjected to eight-game fan ban for spectator incidents, and one-game ban over repeated foul cheering in the current football season.

Bursaspor was also issued a fine of 326,000 TL (approx. $17,150) in disciplinary action by Turkish Football Federation.

The football team of Amedspor, a sports club of Kurdish-majority Diyarbakir, was targeted in Bursa over the weekend in a series of incidents.

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

The next day, some players of Bursaspor and some Bursaspor fans reportedly tried 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.

The leader of far right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Devlet Bahceli, later expressed his sympathy for the "nationalist" stance of Bursaspor, and saluted Bursaspor fans.

Bursa branch of far right Victory Party said in a tweet that it was "natural" for the fans to raise the poster of a white Renault station wagon "because it was manufactured by workers of Bursa at Oyak Renault's Bursa factory."

Victory party later deleted this tweet.