In October 2015, hundreds of Fenerbahce fans assembled outside a courthouse in Istanbul.
They gathered in jubilant mood to celebrate the acquittal of Chairman Aziz
Yildirim and all other defendants of a four-year match-fixing case that had devastated Turkish football.
The scandal, and the original charges, centred on the end of the 2010-11 season.
Trabzonspor had looked the favourites, leading the Super Lig for much of the season, but
Fenerbahce came from behind, winning 16 of their last 17 fixtures.
They ended level on points with Trabzonspor but took the title
thanks to their superior head-to-head record.
But then, in the summer of 2011, it became known that Turkish police were investigating
19 matches on suspicion of match-fixing.
61 directors, managers and players from some of Turkey’s top clubs were arrested.
Ibrahim Akin, a player with Istanbul BB, admitted to police that he had been involved in match-fixing.
He pointed to his side’s Super Lig match against Fenerbahce and the Cup Final against Besiktas as examples.
Fenerbahce and Besiktas were then banned from European competition, for two and one seasons respectively.
Trabzonspor took Fenerbahce’s place in the Champions League,
while Besiktas returned their Turkish Cup trophy to the Turkish Football Federation.
Over the course of the next year, 21 officials and players were sentenced for offences
related to match-fixing, including much of the hierarchy at Fenerbahce, Sivasspor and
Eskisehirspor, as well as a number of players, including Akin.
Yildirim, who at this point had already spent a year in jail, was sentenced to more
than six years in prison by a Special Authority Court, but was released pending a retrial.
He was fined 1.3 million Turkish Lira, or $560,000, and banned from his role at Fenerbahce.
Oddly enough, the court’s ruling came as the Turkish Football Federation cleared the clubs of match-fixing.
The blame was pinned on directors, managers and players, rather than the clubs as entities.
But appeals by Fenerbahce and Besiktas to the Court of Arbitration for Sport had little success.
They remained excluded from European competition.
Much like the clubs, each of those sentenced by Special Authority Court denied their role in match-fixing.
Yildirim, and his codefendants, appealed their sentences, but the court upheld it, after reconsidering in 2014.
He then lashed out, criticising the case as “political”.
Yidlirim pinned the blame on the “parallel state”, or the cemaat,
a supposed shadowy network within the police, army and judiciary, said to be loyal to the US-based cleric Fetullah Gulen.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was prime minister at the
time, offered support to Yildirim, suggesting the investigation into match fixing was a
“very finely calculated step” from within the parallel state.
And just over a year later, all defendants were acquitted.
The Special Authority Courts that had ruled on the original case were abolished
in 2012 by a parliament dominated by Erdogan’s AKP.
The Police Chief at the time of the original case had also been sacked, pending investigation.
The case, demonstrating the particularly murky intersection of
football and politics in Turkey had come to an end.
The actual truth remains elusive.