The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) has provisionally suspended 1,024 professional players at all levels while a full-scale investigation into match-fixing and illegal betting, which has also implicated hundreds of referees, continues to shake the foundations of the country’s most popular sport.
The surprise announcement came last night after weeks of investigations by the TFF had already led to the suspension of 149 referees and assistants for their involvement in sports betting, in which referees, footballers and officials are banned by law. According to Turkish media reports in the last few hours, all the named players have already been referred to the Professional Football Disciplinary Council (PFDK) under Article 57 of the federation’s disciplinary code, which strictly prohibits any kind of gambling or betting related to football.
The more than 1,000 players involved face administrative sanctions including fines and up to 12 months’ suspension, according to TFF regulations. However, this is only the beginning: the case is already in the hands of the prosecutor’s office, which is investigating whether referees, players and managers were able to manipulate the outcome of football matches on which they bet, so all of them also face a criminal investigation that could lead to prison sentences if match-fixing is proven. In fact, last week the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office already ordered the arrest of 17 referees and a president of a first division football club in connection with this case.
Galatasaray and Beşiktaş players involved
Among the players suspended last night by the TFF are 27 players from the Süper Lig (Turkey’s top professional football league), including Turkish players Eren Elmalı and Metehan Baltacı, defender and midfielder respectively for reigning league champions Galatasaray; other prominent players include Necip Uysal and Ersin Destanoğlu, midfielder and goalkeeper for Beşiktaş, respectively.
Destanoğlu was very inconsistent in the recent derby against Fenerbahçe, in which Fenerbahçe came from two goals down to win 2-3 at Beşiktaş Stadium, thanks in part to Destanoğlu doing little to stop two of the goals, according to several sports commentators. The goalkeeper, however, has said in recent hours that he feels “very calm”, insisting on his innocence. Elmalı has also been withdrawn from the Turkish national team’s squad for the upcoming 2026 World Cup qualifiers against Bulgaria and Spain.
The majority of the players suspended by the federation last night – exactly, more than 900 – are, however, from the second and third divisions of Turkey’s professional football league. In view of this serious situation, the TFF has announced the suspension of all Second and Third Division matches for two weeks due to the severe shortage of players at many of the clubs in both divisions, meaning that the competition will not resume until 26 November. At the same time, the Federation has urgently requested authorisation from FIFA to open an extraordinary 15-day window for domestic transfers, so that teams in all divisions can reinforce their squads in view of the high number of departures following the suspensions.
The illegal betting scandal in Turkish football came to light when Turkish Football Federation president İbrahim Hacıosmanoğlu revealed in late October that an internal investigation supported by the Turkish authorities had concluded that almost two out of three of the 571 professional football referees registered with the TFF had accounts with gambling houses, with some of them having placed thousands of bets. In a press appearance on 27 October, Hacıosmanoğlu described the situation as a “moral crisis in Turkish football“, vowing to carry out a restoration of the integrity of the game in Turkey.
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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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