Trial opens of Turkey football fans for ‘seeking to oust Erdogan’

Thirty-five supporters of Turkish top flight football side Besiktas Tuesday went on trial in a hugely controversial case on charges of seeking to overthrow the authorities led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2013 protests.

Hundreds of Besiktas supporters surrounded the Istanbul criminal court as the trial opened, shouting football chants backing the accused who are all members of the club’s main fan club, the Carsi Group.

Prosecutors have accused all 35 suspects of seeking to stage a coup to overthrow the government of Erdogan, who was then prime minister, during the unprecedented 2013 protests against his rule.

However rights groups have ridiculed the charges as absurdly flimsy and based on tendentious evidence such as intercepted telephone calls and text messages merely criticising the government.

“Charging these Besiktas football club fans as enemies of the state for joining a public protest is a ludicrous travesty,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“The indictment contains no evidence to support the coup attempt charges and should never have come to court,” she added in a statement.

Prosecutors have demanded life sentences for the accused, who are all currently not under arrest.

The indictment says the Carsi members also tried to create an image similar to the Arab Spring by providing the foreign media with images of clashes.

The protests began in May 2013 in Istanbul over plans to redevelop Gezi Park on Taksim Square in the centre of the city.

But they then snowballed into a nationwide wave of anger against the rule of Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). At least eight protesters were killed and 8,000 injured in a bloody police crackdown on the protests.

The oldest football club in Turkey, founded in 1903, Besiktas is still one of the top sides and plays in the Super Lig top division.

The Carsi fan group is known for its strong support of the secularist principles laid down by modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as well as an adherence to hard left-wing politics.

The T-shirts of the Carsi (pronounced Charshi and meaning marketplace in Turkish) are adorned with the circular anarchist symbol.

Several trials related to the protests are already taking place across the country as well as a handful of cases of police accused of killing protesters.