Nine suspects detained after violent incidents targeting a Kurdish football team in Turkey’s western city of Bursa over the weekend were released, Turkish news agency DHA reported.
The release orders followed statements by ultra-nationalist party leader Devlet Bahceli, who saluted on Monday Bursa club’s fans and expressed support for the club for its “nationalist stance.”
Claiming that Bursaspor fans were “provoked by a small group of terror supporters,” Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Bahceli said it was “murderous, malicious and ridiculous” to describe the events as an attack on Kurdish people.
Bahceli also voiced objection to the name of Amedspor, the sports club of Kurdish-majority Diyarbakir which many Kurds prefer to call Amed, saying: “There is no such place as Amed, and one cannot talk of an Amedspor.”
The football team of Amedspor was targeted by racist insults and attacks 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 made an attempt to start a fight with 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 notorious Mahmut Yildirim – codename Yesil – who went missing after he has been accused of serving as an executioner in the death squads of state forces throughout the 1990s, were raised by some Bursaspor fans.
Nine suspects in custody, including three private security guards, were released by orders of the prosecution after a brief detention.
Source: Gerçek News
