Amedspor: 'Football Federation and UEFA should take disciplinary measures after Sunday's game'

Photo and video: Roza Yiğit

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

Amedspor announced today on their return from Bursa to Diyarbakır that they will request both the Türkiye Football Federation (TFF) and the UEFA to carry out disciplinary proceedings against the Bursaspor soccer team and the spectators involved in the racist verbal and physical attacks in Sunday's game.

Today (February 6) Amedspor team was first welcomed in the Diyarbakır airport by fan groups of the team, Diyarbakır MPs of People's Democratic Party (HDP) Remziye Tosun, Nusret Maçin, Gülistan Atasoy Tekdemir, and Zeyyat Ceylan and many others.

The club then organized a press conference, together with spectator groups, and the Diyarbakır Protection and Solidarity Platform that was founded following the February 6 earthquakes by 80 non-governmental organizations in the city.

Bursaspor had not fulfilled the obligations as the home team for the order and safety of the sports field and its environment and violated article 14 of the related discipline regulation, Amedspor stated.

Polis, #Amedspor kafilesini havalimanında taraftarlarıyla buluşturmadı

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"Wrongdoing players should be barred from games"

Amedspor requested that the game should be forfeited and Bursaspor should be considered to have lost, that those Bursaspor players who have violated the rules be identified and barred from the games.

The team also wants that a decision should be made that Bursaspor will play all games this year without spectators and that those spectators who carried out physical attacks, who brought sharp objects into the stadium, who opened banners including racist content and hate speech should be identified and banned from entering the games for a lifetime, in addition to other disciplinary measures.

The team announced that they will be also applying the UEFA Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body and request them to carry out disciplinary measures also.

The team invited all to share the Amedspor logo on their social media accounts for 24 hours and to hang the club flags at their homes and cars.

What happened?

Players of Amedspor, a football team based in the Kurdish-majority province of Diyarbakır, were targeted in racist attacks ahead of and during the game on Sunday, on March 5, against Bursaspor in Bursa.

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

During the game supporters of Bursaspor threw objects onto the field throughout the game while displaying racist banners. The referees did not postpone the game despite the incidents.

Banners were unfurled on the stands, with symbols making reference to the very tense period of 1990s in the country's Kurdish-majority regions. 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 had become a symbol of people forcibly abducted by security forces and disappeared in that period. (RY/AÖ/PE)