When it comes to Turkish football, nothing should be particularly surprising anymore, although it still has the capacity to shock.
So when news filtered through on Sunday night that Galatasaray’s game against Adana Demirspor had been abandoned because the visiting team had walked off the pitch just after the half-hour mark, in protests against refereeing decisions, the instinct was to be stunned.
But then blink twice, shrug and you’ll think, “Yeah, that makes sense.”
To quickly recap: in the 12th minute, Galatasaray were awarded a penalty for a ‘foul’ on Dries Mertens. Depending on your point of view, Belgian forward Mertens either dived or at least exaggerated the contact between his leg and defender Semih Guler. Either way, the video assistant referee didn’t regard it as enough of a mistake to overturn the decision. New Galatasaray signing Alvaro Morata converted the penalty.
At that point, the Adana Demirspor board collectively decided to withdraw their players from the match, in protest against not just a decision they regarded as unfair, but one that was symptomatic of “conscious referee mistakes and injustice that have become systematic”, as the club put it in a statement. “This decision is a reaction by our club against systematic, deliberate referee errors and injustice,” that statement continued.
Adana Demirspor chairman Murat Sancak then phoned the president of the Turkish Football Federation (TFF), Ibrahim Haciosmanoglu, to inform him of the decision. Haciosmanoglu expressed sympathy and tried to talk Sancak out of taking such a big step, but he held firm.
There was then a period of mild farce as the decision was communicated to the Adana Demirspor coaching staff, who attempted to convey it to the fourth official. However, the noise in the stadium, combined with some confusion about how serious the visitors actually were, meant the message didn’t really get through until just after the 30-minute mark. The game stopped after Adana Demirspor forward Yusuf Barasi went down injured, at which point his head coach Mustafa Alper Avci called Guler, their captain, to the sidelines.
Guler in turn called the rest of the team off the pitch. Still, confusion reigned. Several players were visibly baffled, but they disappeared down the tunnel to the sound of deafening whistles from the Galatasaray fans. After a short delay as attempts were unsuccessfully made to change Adana Demirspor’s minds, the game was abandoned by the match officials.
Galatasaray’s English language X account confirmed this with a waspish post reading: “Opposition Adana Demirspor (standing at the bottom of table with five points and -31 goal difference) opts to withdraw from the match.”
Opposition Adana Demirspor (standing at the bottom of table with 5 points and -31 goal difference) opts to withdraw from the match.
— Galatasaray EN (@Galatasaray) February 9, 2025
Then the nonsense really started.
Jose Mourinho, manager of Galatasaray’s Istanbul rivals Fenerbahce, inserted himself into the debate (of course he did) by posting a carousel of three pictures and videos on Instagram: one was a still of him coaching from the sidelines during his team’s 2-0 win over Alanyaspor earlier that day, another was a clip of him studying a scouting report of Anderlecht, their opponents in the Europa League play-offs this week, and the third was a clip of the Mertens/Guler incident.
Rumours began to fly. Accusations of conspiracy were circulated.
Galatasaray vice-president Metin Ozturk seemed to imply the whole thing was planned by saying: “Some people must have been expecting it because while we were trying to understand what happened, tweets started to be sent.”
Their head coach Okan Buruk also suggested the walk-off was pre-meditated, telling the media after the game: “This is not the first mistake made against them. I don’t believe this was an innocent, spontaneous decision.”
Outlandish theories were put forward.
The Athletic was told by sources close to Galatasaray that some at the club believed the whole thing was orchestrated by Fenerbahce president Ali Koc, an accusation which seeped out further into the Turkish media. The theory put forward was that Fenerbahce wanted to maintain the three-point gap to Galatasaray at the top of the Super Lig, ahead of the big Istanbul derby on February 23, rather than risk it being extended to six if the result on Sunday had stood.
That doesn’t particularly stack up for a variety of reasons, and Fenerbahce strongly denied any connection to the incident, going on the counter-offensive by releasing a statement on Sunday night that read: “Your fraudulent player contracts, black market tickets and illegal betting advertisements may keep on deceiving the State and the Turkish Football Federation. Your illicit connections in the press and insincere statements may keep on deceiving the public. Your football players may keep on deceiving referees and football fans for years with their rigged moves.
“Thanks to you there is neither trust nor justice left in Turkish football. Nevertheless, you always claim to be innocent and to be victimised. Congratulations! Look what you have turned Turkish football into!”
Galatasaray are yet to respond to a request for comment from The Athletic.
Your fraudulent player contracts, black market tickets and illegal betting advertisements may keep on deceiving the State and the Turkish Football Federation,
Your illicit connections in the press and insincere statements may keep on deceiving the public,
Your football players…— Fenerbahçe English (@Fenerbahce_EN) February 9, 2025
Speaking to Turkish sports channel A Spor, Adana Demispor chairman Sancak also distanced Fenerbahce and Koc from the decision. “This is not an act against Galatasaray,” he said. “Ninety-nine per cent maybe we would have been defeated today. However, I see some comments, that neither Ali Koc nor the richest man in the Republic of Turkey can buy me.
“Everyone should know this. Ali Koc cannot be someone to give me instructions. I don’t take instructions from anyone. A man lives for his honour.
“This operation was done against the federation and MHK (the central refereeing committee). Theatre is being played. I would have done the same if it was Besiktas, Fenerbahce or Trabzonspor.”
Adana Demirspor further clarified their position in a statement released on Monday, in which they said: “Our club refuses to be a part of this distorted order into which Turkish Football has been dragged. We demand that interventions aimed at wearing down MHK and TFF be stopped. We declare to the public that we will not bow to injustice and systematic wrongs. We hope that this decision we have taken will be a milestone. We hope that injustice will end now.
“We state that we accept any punishment regarding our club and our community. We wish Turkish Football to have green fields where clean, fair and honourable matches take place. Our struggle will continue until an order is established where those who deserve it win and justice prevails!
Morata scored the penalty that led to Adana Demirspor’s walk-off (Ahmad Mora/Getty Images)
“Finally, our advice to the Turkish Football Federation and its boards is this: It is your duty to fight against this structure. The board members appointed you to the management with the belief that you will fulfil this duty to the end. It is your duty to Turkish football, this country and those who voted for you to fulfil this sacred duty properly. We want to believe that you will fight until the end on this issue and that you will not run away from this struggle.”
Also on Monday, Adana Demirspor president Bedirhan Durak stepped down, saying in a statement: “I am resigning from the presidency, which was granted to me for the sake of my club, my family, my loved ones and my health, for a better tomorrow.”
At the time of writing, an official decision has not been made about how the game will be recorded, but the strong likelihood is that Galatasaray will be awarded a 3-0 walkover win. It’s also possible that Adana Demirspor could receive some sort of sanction, maybe a points deduction, for their actions. The TFF did not respond to a request for comment from The Athletic.
It’s not an oversimplification or a sweeping generalisation to say that basically everyone in Turkish football is paranoid about refereeing. You will struggle to find a club there who don’t, on some level, think the system is rigged against them in some form. Sometimes that is a few rogue individuals, sometimes it’s an institutional policy.
This formed the basis of Fenerbahce’s threat to withdraw from the Super Lig last year. It also leads to situations such as Ankaragucu president Faruk Koca storming onto the pitch and punching a referee in the head, as he did in December 2023. Koca was given a lifetime ban from Turkish football by the authorities but was not universally condemned. This indicates how deep the anti-refereeing sentiment runs in the country.
This isn’t even the first time a game in Turkey has been abandoned because a team walked off in protest against a refereeing decision.
Also in December 2023, Istanbulspor president Ecmel Faik Sarialioglu withdrew his players from a game against Trabzonspor because his side weren’t awarded a penalty. Trabzonspor were awarded a 3-0 win and Istanbulspor were docked three points, but the fact the same scenario has been repeated now just over a year later, even though the likely punishment is known, emphasises how deep feelings run.
It’s part of the reason that Mourinho, not a man afraid of criticising referees and hinting at dark conspiracies, has seemed quite at home there since taking the Fenerbahce job last summer. During a game in October, he moved a laptop being used in their dugout during a game in front of a TV camera, showing the world an image that supposedly proved a decision given against his side was incorrect. The following month, the former Porto, Chelsea, Inter, Real Madrid, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur and Roma manager suggested that he would never have come to Turkey had he known how bad things were, suggesting that in a game against Trabzonspor, the VAR was “the man of the match”.
In an attempt to combat the problem, the TFF has outsourced some of its officiating.
For the second half of this season, video assistant referees from other countries have been introduced: the VAR in the Galatasaray-Adana Demirspor game on Sunday was Jakob Alexander Sundberg, from Denmark. The idea is that if officials come from outside Turkey, they will be free of the biases that many believe are still present in the game there and it will be more difficult to accuse them of impropriety.
Clearly, it hasn’t worked.
As can be seen from the incident at the weekend, these foreign officials are immediately regarded as part of the football establishment many believe to be corrupt, and assumed to be the same as the rest.
Mourinho posted on Instagram after the incident (Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images)
And it’s difficult to see how things can be fixed.
Strident accusations of impropriety are thrown around frequently and casually, but at the same time with great anger.
In December, Galatasaray demanded that TFF president Haciosmanoglu resign over comments he made on TV in which he alluded to unspecified “heavy costs” that might befall Dursun Ozbek, the club’s president. Their statement remains pinned at the top of the news feed on the club’s website, some two months later. Haciosmanoglu responded, as reported by NTVSpor, commenting: “If more than half of the clubs do not want us, we will leave… If it is proven that I spoke against Galatasaray with someone, I will resign.”
Haciosmanoglu has his own interesting history with referees: in 2015, while he was Trabzonspor president, the match officials were locked in a room for four hours after a game against Gaziantepspor, during which he was unhappy that a penalty had not been awarded to his team. “I told stadium security not to let the referees leave until the morning until I arrived,” he said at the time, “but a very important person called me and asked me not to cause embarrassment in Turkey and around the world.”
That very important person was Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s national president. Haciosmanoglu was given a 280-day ban from football and fined for his role in the incident. Despite this, he was elected as TFF president last July.
Ultimately, many sensible observers of the Turkish game are simply embarrassed by the situation. One, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to protect relationships, called it “science fiction”. Another said that Turkish football was “below zero”.
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Banu Yelkovan, a respected columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, wrote on Monday: “Is football a game where you walk off the pitch every time you don’t like a decision? As teams and managers, we have seen and understood enough that you have no respect for each other, but now you have no respect for the fans either.”
Yelkovan added in the article that whenever spectators think they have seen everything, they see something fresh. He also said the situation around referees and VARs was becoming like “playing violin on the Titanic”.
In most places, incidents like this would be outliers, shocking events that won’t be repeated for years, if at all.
But in Turkey… well, we’ll see you in a few months for the next one.
(Top photo: Yusuf Dursun/ dia images via Getty Images)
