A celebratory Facebook post by Deniz Naki spoke on Kurdish resistance.
A soccer player in Turkey gets banned for talking politics
Smoke rises over the district of Sur in Diyarbakir on Feb. 3, 2016. Four Turkish soldiers were killed on Jan. 27 in clashes with Kurdistan Worker's Party militants in Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey, as a controversial curfew order was expanded to new areas in the Kurdish-dominated city. (Ilyas Akengin/AFP/Getty Images)
Last week, Deniz Naki, a 26-year-old striker who was born in Germany but is of Kurdish origin, posted a celebratory comment following his team's victory in a cup match. He referenced the ongoing unrest and violence in Turkey's southeast, which is in the grips of a low-level civil war between security forces and fighters affiliated with the outlawed, separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.
As WorldViews wrote earlier this week, whole towns are under curfew, while the historic old neighborhood of Sur in Diyarbakir is in a state of siege, with tens of thousands of residents fleeing. Naki's post read as follows, according to Reuters:
We dedicate this victory as a gift to those who have lost their lives and those wounded in the repression in our land which has lasted for more than 50 days. We as Amedspor have not bowed our heads and will not do so. We went on to the pitch with our belief in freedom and won.Hostilities have flared since a slow-moving peace process collapsed last summer. The past few months have seen a particularly worrying spike in violence.
Supporters of Amedspor, who belong largely to the country's minority Kurdish population, were heard chanting pro-Kurdish slogans at the game last week. "Everywhere is Sur, everywhere resistance," they cried. That, too, earned the club a fine and punishment from Turkish soccer authorities, who have ruled the club play its next cup match on Feb. 10 without spectators.
This is not the first time that Naki, whose family hails from the eastern Turkish city of Tunceli, has been at the center of controversy. He has been outspoken in his support of Kurdish rights, as well as the plight of Syrian Kurdish militias battling the Islamic State on the other side of the border with Turkey.
In November 2014, when he was playing for a club in the capital Ankara, Naki alleged that he was subject to a racist attack at night by three men who detested his pro-Kurdish sympathies.
Turkey's deep political polarization sometimes can be reflected in its soccer stadiums, where nationalist and anti-government passions both often get aired by rival groups of fans.
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Ishaan
Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He
previously was a senior editor at TIME, based first in Hong Kong and
later in New York.
COPY https://www.washingtonpost.com/world
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