Fenerbahçe has not hesitated to accuse Galatasaray coach Okan Buruk of faking a serious assault by throwing himself on to the pitch after the incident with Mourinho at the end of the Turkish Cup match on Wednesday, unleashing an exchange of accusations in which the current Turkish league leaders have also not hesitated to respond in the last few hours to the accusations of the ‘Yellow Canaries’.
In a repeat of the derby match that the two teams played in the league at the end of February, Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe faced each other in a highly tense and incident-packed quarter-final of the Turkish Ziraat Cup, that ended with a 2-1 victory for the former.
Just after the end of the match, an unpleasant incident occurred when the coach of Fenerbahçe, Mourinho, angrily approached Buruk from behind and apparently grabbed him by the nose. After this physical contact, the Galatasaray coach let out a scream and fell to the ground, apparently writhing in pain, while Mourinho was removed from the scene.
The incident has unleashed a new crisis in Turkish football and all kinds of speculation and comments. Fenerbahçe reacted by posting a long statement on its social networks in which it accuses Buruk of provoking Mourinho beforehand with ‘disrespectful hand gestures’, claiming that the Portuguese coach’s reaction was to ‘excessive and planned provocations’ from the Galatasaray coach; Fenerbahçe also accused Buruk of ‘throwing himself to the ground in a professional manner as part of his plan’, also claiming that throughout his career it has become a ‘characteristic’ to see Buruk throwing himself to the ground feigning aggressions.
Galatasaray responds harshly
Buruk, for his part, reacted to Mourinho’s alleged attack by emphasising that the conduct of the Portuguese coach was ‘neither very pleasant nor very elegant’, although he added that he had suffered only a minor injury. Galatasaray vice-president Metin Öztürk denounced what had happened as ‘an attack not only on the Galatasaray coach, but on Turkish football’.
Turkish media sources also reported that in the last few hours Galatasaray also issued a harsh response to the previous statement issued by Fenerbahçe, in which the team said it felt ‘once again ashamed on behalf of Turkish football’, stressing that ‘the damage done to national football by the technical director of the rival team… has increased rapidly in the last 8 months’ and recalling that Mourinho has already been involved in similar ‘inappropriate incidents’ in the past.
The Turkish team regrets that, far from offering an apology for the attack on Okan Buruk, Fenerbahçe has issued a statement in which it ‘makes fun of the intelligence of the Turkish football community’. ‘We sadly observe the unfortunate situation of those who have tried to give us lessons in the past,’ concludes Galatasaray, who says they feel ’embarrassed’ and expresses their desire that Mourinho not receive ’a minor punishment for what happened.’
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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