A massive betting scandal is plunging Turkish football into chaos. The major clubs are demanding immediate consequences.
371 referees with betting accounts, 152 referees actively betting on matches – and ten officials who placed more than 10,000 bets: Turkish football is sinking into chaos following the exposure of a massive scandal. The credibility of the country’s most popular sport by far is at stake, and appropriate answers must be found quickly for the many open questions.
“If we want to bring Turkish football to where it belongs, we must eliminate all dirt,” said association president Ibrahim Haciosmanoglu, who presented the shocking results of an internal investigation of 571 referees at a press conference: “We are determined to free football from any trace of corruption.” In doing so, they will “make no exceptions.” The Istanbul prosecutor’s office immediately announced that an investigation had been initiated.
How serious the problem is becomes clear upon closer examination of the alarming numbers. For example, one of the accused referees alone placed 18,227 bets (!), 42 referees bet on more than 1000 football matches each. Most of the matches bet on were games from foreign leagues. 22 of the 371 referees are employed at the national level, but Haciosmanoglu did not reveal their identities. Furthermore, it remained unclear whether some of them are suspected of having bet on matches they officiated.
The reactions from the top clubs of the Süper Lig were not long in coming. The new information “clearly demonstrated the extent of the trust and justice crisis that Turkish football has been in for a long time,” wrote Galatasaray Istanbul, the club of Leroy Sané and Ilkay Gündogan.
The revelations are “shocking” and “deeply regrettable,” said Sadettin Saran, president of Fenerbahce: “But the fact that this is coming to light is a hopeful development.” City rivals Besiktas also stated that the investigation results “could mean a new beginning for clean football.”
After all, accusations of bias against referees have been repeatedly raised in Turkey in recent times. For this reason, the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) entrusted the video referee for several Süper Lig matches to foreign referees in spring 2024. In February, a foreign official also refereed the derby between Galatasaray and Fenerbahce.
Above all, the Istanbul heavyweights now urgently want to see consequences. “We believe it is of great importance that the federation transparently discloses to the public the names of the referees for whom betting accounts were found, the matches they officiated, and the extent of the bets they placed,” wrote Galatasaray to the TFF – because: “The reputation, fairness, and trustworthiness of Turkish football are above everything else.”