Upholding of Yıldırım’s conviction; another case of ‘significant timing’


Date posted: January 22, 2014

GÜNAY HİLAL AYGÜN

Turkey saw the announcement of a prominent court ruling on Friday regarding a major match-fixing case involving Aziz Yıldırım, chairman of Fenerbahçe, one of the leading football clubs in the country.

The Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the decision of a lower court that sentenced Yıldırım to prison in the case in which several football clubs are involved. Yıldırım, who is accused of fixing games, trying to influence the outcome of matches and leading a criminal gang, was sentenced to six years, three months in prison in 2012. Yıldırım had spent a year behind bars but was released pending the outcome of his appeal. Now he will have to return to prison and step down as Fenerbahçe chairman. The scandal that rocked the reputation of Turkish football hit the media in July 2011, with police raids on football club premises and detentions of 60 people suspected of rigging football matches in two leagues. Top officials of the various clubs, including Fenerbahçe and Beşiktaş had been arrested on charges of fraud and match fixing. The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) banned Fenerbahçe from European club competition for three seasons and Beşiktaş for one season.

Yıldırım, who was in France when he learned the upholding of his conviction by the Supreme Court of Appeals said he doesn’t recognize the verdict and claimed the case was politically motivated.

Hürriyet daily columnist Cengiz Çandar made a reference to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s comments concerning the Yıldırım verdict that he made while speaking to reporters at an airport before leaving for Brussels. Çandar quoted Erdoğan saying: “I consider the timing [of the Supreme Court of Appeals ruling] significant. Why wasn’t it announced before? Why was it announced just before the elections? They could have done it after March 30. This is to confuse people’s minds. I believe that a ‘parallel state’ that dominates the judiciary has taken that step as a result of its delicate calculations.” According to Çandar, Erdoğan was suggesting with that statement that the Hizmet (Service) movement was behind the court rulings against Yıldırım. Çandar wrote: “However, members and supporters of Fenerbahçe are no longer so naive as to buy Erdoğan’s words. … Nowadays, Erdoğan is leading a defamation campaign to black out the truth and to distort the facts through the discourses of ‘parallel state,’ ‘there is no corruption; but a coup’ and ‘international conspiracy’.” Çandar then quoted Yıldırım responding to a question asking if he thinks that the Hizmet movement is behind the case against Fenerbahçe, in an interview he recently gave to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), saying: “This is not what I think. This is what the prime minister of the Turkish Republic thinks.”

With respect to the upholding of Yıldırım’s conviction, the Vatan daily’s Sanem Altan criticized the stance of the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) in her Wednesday column. Altan wrote: “What kind of a state is it where a court and a federation [TFF] can have such contradicting decisions? And is a football system reliable when it can have completely opposite decisions with the judiciary? … UEFA says ‘the crime has occurred,’ courts say ‘yes, it has’ and rule for conviction, the TFF says ‘no, there is no crime for us’.” Altan also asked, “How can the prime minister label the judiciary as unreliable by attributing the ruling to a ‘parallel state’?”

Source: Todays Zaman , January 22, 2014


Related News

Jailed journalist facing new trial for not calling Gülen movement a terror organization

Journalist Emre Soncan, who has been behind bars for 20 months, is facing a new trial for not describing the Gülen movement as a terrorist organization. Soncan, 36, used to work for Turkey’s best-selling Zaman daily, which was closed down by the Turkish government in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016 due to its links to the Gülen movement.

Is the Hizmet movement statist or populist?

In the last three years the AK Party established their new “center” with the new statism away from the periphery. The Hizmet movement viewed this change as a new centralization and thus a new statism and tutelage with new political and capitalist actors. Due to this change in attitude, the Hizmet movement broke faith with Erdoğan and the AK Party.

Cleric’s Lawyers Want US Suit Backed by Turkey Tossed

Attorneys for a reclusive Muslim cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania asked a federal judge late Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit that claims he orchestrated human rights abuses in his native Turkey, denouncing it as “pure political theater” by the Turkish government.

Questions for the government regarding prep school closure

BÜLENT KENEŞ What we have concluded after discussing the government’s plan to shut down prep schools for the past 12 days is that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is resolved to proceed with the plan. In this process we have understood that no argument about prep schools’ contributions to education, pedagogy, the principle of equal […]

Cagaptay: Turkey moves far beyond Europe

Recently, visiting Istanbul, I attended a conference on the Arab Spring organized by Abant Platform, a local NGO that gathers Turkish intellectuals of different stripes for policy debates. The conference – this time with attendees from Washington, Tel Aviv, London, St. Petersburg and Arab capitals in addition to Turks – debated Turkey’s leadership role in […]

Gülen’s German collaborator, or the German slap?

Is President Gauck the German controlling agent for the German cell of this merciless terrorist organization? Did President Gauck make that speech –unusually bold [and honest] for a visiting dignitary – because he, too, is being held hostage to blackmail by the Gülenists? Did the Turkish “parallel state” tap Mr. Gauck’s phones and blackmail him? Or did Mr. Gauck say what he said because he had been paid by Lufthansa which, according to Mr. Erdoğan’s men, was one the foreign conspirators behind the Gezi Park protests?

Latest News

Fethullah Gulen – man of education, peace and dialogue – passes away

Fethullah Gülen’s Condolence Message for South African Human Rights Defender Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Hizmet Movement Declares Core Values with Unified Voice

Ankara systematically tortures supporters of Gülen movement, Kurds, Turkey Tribunal rapporteurs say

Erdogan possessed by Pharaoh, Herod, Hitler spirits?

Devious Use of International Organizations to Persecute Dissidents Abroad: The Erdogan Case

A “Controlled Coup”: Erdogan’s Contribution to the Autocrats’ Playbook

Why is Turkey’s Erdogan persecuting the Gulen movement?

Purge-victim man sent back to prison over Gulen links despite stage 4 cancer diagnosis

In Case You Missed It

12-year-old claims asylum with UN as father caught in Erdogan’s anti-Gülen dragnet in Saudi Arabia

Fethullah Gulen’s books draw booklovers at Riyadh book fair

Colours of the World; IFLC Pakistan grand finale

Fethullah Gülen Offers Antidote For Terror

NBA star Enes Kanter on faith, basketball and political activism

Turkey has not achieved enough democratization for Fethullah Gülen’s return

What is lacking in democratization package is democracy itself

Copyright 2025 Hizmet News