“Vile conspiracy ordered by internal and external links”

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ultranationalist governing ally MHP’s leader Devlet Bahceli slammed Turkey’s football fans calling on AKP government to resign over its response to the earthquakes as a vile conspiracy.

"A handful of hooligan groups calling the government to resign is a vile conspiracy ordered by internal and external links,” Bahceli said during an address to MHP lawmakers in the parliament on Tuesday.

"The mob that accuses the state and the government is faulty and has malicious intents," he said, urging authorities to identify the “provocateurs defying the state”.

On the weekend, the fans of Besiktas and Fenerbahce football clubs have protested Turkish government’s response to the major earthquakes that hit the country’s southeast, killing almost 45,000 people.

Thousands in the tribunes chanted slogans for the government’s “resignation” during their teams’ games.

“Those who are struggling to bring Turkish sports into politics are in the middle of a historical mistake. Voicing a call for government to resign in chorus in the stadiums is a great disrespect to our citizens who lost their lives in the earthquake. They are in a vile fiction. Sport means being moral. Everyone should know their limits. Those who aid and abet abasement, regardless of who they are, are the centers that have turned their backs on their country and nation. Tribunes cannot be places to shout rotten slogans,” Bahceli said.

“The provocateurs defying the state should be identified, and Turkish sports should be removed from the hall where it fell,” he said.