From Diyarbakırspor to Amedspor: The language of hatred carried to the pitches by the Turkish right

Eren Tutel

The storm brewed following Amedspor’s promotion to the Super League (Turkey’s top-tier professional football league) is not an ordinary reaction directed at a football club. The atmosphere where Diyarbakırspor’s experiences in Bursa and Mersin meet the conditions where Amedspor was forced to play under banners of Beyaz Toros (White Renault 12 cars associated with 1990s extrajudicial killings) and Yeşil (The "Green" codename of Mahmut Yıldırım, a notorious JİTEM operative) demonstrates how right-wing nationalist politics in Turkey has constructed a language of hatred through the terraces.

Imagine a team: they take the field, expected to play 90 minutes of football. But before the ball is even placed at the centre spot, the nature of the match changes. The opponent is no longer a sporting rival but a target for the stands, social media, politics, and years of accumulated resentment. The kit, the crest, the city, the name… all of it is suddenly dragged outside the realm of football. This is exactly what has transpired with Amedspor’s promotion to the Super League. On the scoreboard, there is a simple fact: the representative of Diyarbakır has reached the Super League for the first time in its history.

THE NOISE FOLLOWING THE CONGRATULATIONS

However, in Turkey, certain successes are not read merely as success. This is why even the congratulatory messages from Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, and Beşiktaş to Amedspor did not remain as ordinary sporting gestures. They were met with backlash from right-wing nationalist and racist circles.

The common refrain in these reactions was almost mechanical: “We don’t have a problem with Kurds, but…” It is precisely after that “but” where Turkey’s long and exhausting story usually begins. This “but” is more than a conjunction; it is a threshold. It pretends to invite you in with the first sentence, only to slam the door in your face with the second. It seeks to absolve itself by saying “We have no problem,” but draws the line with the “but.” It is claimed that “the issue is not the existence of Kurds,” yet the visibility of Kurds with their own name, their own language, and their own memory is treated as a problem.

The Amedspor issue begins exactly here. Because the reaction is not directed at a club’s promotion to the Süper Lig, but at that club entering the most visible arena as a symbol touching upon the Kurdish memory of Diyarbakır, under the name Amed (the Kurdish name for Diyarbakır).

THE STORY OF DIYARBAKIRSPOR

It would be simplistic to start this story today. Behind the anger directed at Amedspor lies a long memory accumulated by Diyarbakırspor on the pitches.

Diyarbakırspor was founded in 1968. As one of the first clubs from the East and Southeast to rise to the Super League, it earned a very strong place in the city's footballing soul. Its foundation aligned with the era’s idea of having a strong team for every province. It was part of a footballing mobilisation aimed at spreading Turkish leagues across the country. In other words, Diyarbakırspor was initially a regional representation project that the state did not object to, and even encouraged. However, as the matter began to touch upon identity tensions outside the football pitch, that space for representation gradually narrowed.

"THE OBLIGATION TO PROVE"

By the late 2000s, Diyarbakırspor’s away fixtures were no longer just match trips. Every away game turned into a test, a tension, and an obligation to "prove oneself." The Bursaspor-Diyarbakırspor match on 26 September 2009 became one of the harshest breaking points in this memory.

THE EVENTS OF 2009

Suat Önen, the then-Press Spokesman for Diyarbakırspor, described the events in Bursa which began with slogans of “PKK out” and continued with violence as a “racist attitude.” The club even considered withdrawing from the league if sanctions were not imposed. What happened in the stands that day was not ordinary rivalry. A football match was suddenly transformed into a rite of 'national security.' The opposing stands constructed a language that coded the facing team not as a sporting rival, but as an enemy of the state.

The accounts of a fan after that match show why this cannot be dismissed as a mere “stadium incident.” Diyarbakırspor fans recounted how “PKK out” slogans were chanted before and during the match, to which they responded, “We are not the PKK.”

"I FELT LIKE A CITIZEN OF ANOTHER COUNTRY"

The words of a fan who was in the stands that day summarised the situation clearly: “I felt like I was a citizen of another country.” If that is what a football fan feels at an away game, then football is not the only thing being discussed there. There is a threshold of citizenship, a test of belonging, and an interrogation of “Are you one of us?”

The critical point is this: the right-wing nationalist language turns the football terrace into a kind of front line. It views the players, fans, and directors of the opposing team not as individuals, but as carriers of a collectively criminalised identity. Thus, football’s sense of competition transforms into a ritual of ethnic and political vilification.

What happened to Diyarbakırspor was not limited to Bursa. In a Mersin away match, slogans like “PKK out” and “Servants of Apo (referring to Abdullah Öcalan) out” were chanted; in response, Diyarbakırspor fans pulled out their national ID cards and sang the Turkish National Anthem.

THE CREATIONS OF THE LANGUAGE OF HATRED

This scene is almost like a tragic allegory of Turkey: a team’s supporters are forced to prove their citizenship in the stands where they went to watch a match. A person who enters the stadium with a football ticket is forced to take out their ID and say, “I am here too, I am a citizen of this country.” Herein lies the most insidious side of the language of hatred: it constantly pushes a person to be defensive. It forces one to constantly say “I am not.” Yet, no one goes to a football match to prove themselves.

Later, the same tension moved to Diyarbakır. The language of hatred that began in Bursa found a response. In 2010, the Diyarbakırspor-Bursaspor match was abandoned in the 17th minute due to incidents. In this match—where we clearly saw hate feeding on hate, and where stones and sticks appeared—the athletes suffered the most. The TFF (Turkish Football Federation) awarded a 3-0 forfeit defeat to Diyarbakırspor. This decision became a link in the chain that affected the sporting fate of the season.

Of course, it would be incorrect to attribute the collapse of Diyarbakırspor to a single match or decision. The club had financial, administrative, and sporting problems, but it would be equally deficient to ignore the weight that this long line of tension placed on the club’s shoulders. Because a club lives not only on a budget but also on a climate. In a climate where it is constantly targeted, subjected to identity checks at away games, and imprisoned within tension at its own home, football cannot be expected to remain normal.

THEY RECEDED TO THE AMATEUR LEAGUES

Consequently, Diyarbakırspor’s decline was sharp. The club, which was in the Süper Lig in the 2009-10 season, subsequently drifted through the lower leagues. In 2013, it fell to the amateur ranks. As the team once etched into the city's memory withdrew from the stage, it left behind not only a sporting wreckage but also a mirror that Turkish football wished to ignore.

Years later, Amedspor appeared before that mirror. Amedspor did not just fill the void left by Diyarbakırspor sportingly; it also carried another form of the city's representation onto the pitch, but this time the reaction was ready from the start. Because the name Amed possessed a visibility that pushed the limits of tolerance for right-wing nationalist politics.

Even the presence of a city’s historical name on a kit, a scoreboard, a fixture list, or on television was considered a kind of “boundary violation” by certain circles. It was no coincidence that Amedspor was discussed in an extraordinary manner even while in the lower leagues, faced various bans, suffered attacks during away games, and was targeted on social media.

THE PUNISHMENT FOR A BANNER

The 2016 match against Fenerbahçe is a symbolic example in this regard. Amedspor took the field in the Turkish Cup quarter-finals with a banner reading “Let children not die, let them come to the match.” The Professional Football Discipline Board (PFDK) fined the club for this banner. When even the desire for children not to die is punished through the language of “violating regulations,” the issue ceases to be a mere matter of rules. It is a matter of narrowing the political space.

Amedspor’s experiences were not limited to this. In 2016, following an Ankaragücü-Amedspor match, Amedspor directors were attacked in the protocol stands. The PFDK issued stadium bans and neutral ground penalties to Ankaragücü, and some directors were banned from footballing activities.

ATTACKS ON DIRECTORS

In an interview published in 2018, it was reported that Amedspor faced racist rhetoric in many cities it visited, that there was a physical attack on the technical staff during the Ankaragücü match, and that a director’s nose was broken. When these come together, we are faced not with isolated incidents, but with a form of treatment that has gained continuity.

One of the darkest scenes of this continuity occurred during the Bursaspor-Amedspor match in Bursa on 5 March 2023. The banners displayed in the stadium showed with full clarity that the issue was not just “fan unruly behaviour”: the Beyaz Toros and Mahmut Yıldırım, codenamed Yeşil.

These two symbols are not just any two banners. The White Toros is one of the heaviest images in social memory regarding the period of "unsolved murders" and violence in the region during the 1990s. Mahmut Yıldırım, codenamed Yeşil, is the most frequently mentioned figure of that same dark period. When these banners are opened at a football match, the message given to the other side is not “we want to beat you,” but something much darker: “We know your memory, and we are carrying the fear of that memory to the stands.” This is not football rivalry; it is the transformation of trauma into a banner. In a place where the ball is in play, the ghosts of the 90s have been summoned to the terraces.

Furthermore, a picture emerged after the incident that could not be explained by the excitement of just a few fans. But the problem is that the climate allowing these symbols to enter the stands did not form in a single day. This climate is the product of the political language that has hidden behind the sentence “We don't have a problem with Kurds, but…” for years.

POLITICAL POWER DERIVED FROM THE TRIBUNES

The political gain mechanism works very clearly here. Right-wing nationalist politics views the football terrace as a ready-made reservoir of emotion. Fandom already produces a strong sense of “us.” Colours, anthems, symbols, anger, and joy are already on stage. When the language of ethnic and political vilification is added to this foundation, the terrace suddenly transforms into an area of political mobilisation.

The young fan unconsciously repeats a sentence bequeathed to them. First, they shout “PKK out,” (Kurdistan Workers' Party Out!) then they squeeze every instance of Kurdish visibility into this sentence. Later, they say, “We have no problem with Kurds,” but they cannot tolerate Amedspor being congratulated. Because even if the problem is not with Kurds, it is with the possibility of Kurds existing as equals, with visibility, and with their own name.

This is why the debates over congratulations following Amedspor’s promotion to the Süper Lig are not just social media noise. The congratulatory messages from Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, and Beşiktaş, and the fact that Trabzonspor did not congratulate Amedspor but instead made a post for 'May 3rd Turkism Day,' also became a topic of discussion.

The issue here is not merely the social media preference of individual clubs, but how reflexes involving the language of hatred are activated even after a footballing success. While clubs that congratulated were targeted with “Why did you congratulate?”, the attitude of those who did not was applauded as a “stance” in certain circles. In other words, even the simplest gesture of sporting ethics is turned into a loyalty test.

THE METHOD OF DECLARING A SUSPECT

We are talking about a concrete language produced by historically organised right-wing nationalist and racist politics in Turkey. The method of this language is clear: first, it criminalises identity, then it declares every visibility of that identity suspicious. It then carries this suspicion to the terraces, social media, television commentary, and club reflexes. Finally, it tries to market the resulting hatred as “public sensitivity.” Yet, this is not a spontaneously born sensitivity, but a garden of anger that has been watered for years.

The line stretching from Diyarbakırspor to Amedspor is therefore like two acts of the same story. In the first act, there was Diyarbakırspor: it took the field as a regional team also supported by the state but was met with “PKK out” slogans in the stands, and its fans were forced to show their identity cards. It became a target in Bursa and other away games, and was remembered for forfeit defeats and collapse following tensions at its own home.

In the second act, there is Amedspor. It faced attacks in the same away matches, was pushed into the middle of a hate choreography referring to the darkness of the 90s with White Toros and Yeşil banners, and today, upon rising to the Süper Lig, it was met with the same sentences.

The most dangerous thing in this story is that hatred becomes normalised not by shouting, but by repetition. A slogan startles when first heard. It angers when heard a second time. By the hundredth time, it becomes 'terrace culture' for some. This is where the success of hate speech politics in the stands lies: it makes hatred everyday. It packages a banner as a 'joke,' a slogan as a 'reaction,' an attack as 'tension,' and an exclusion as 'sensitivity.' Thus, the young fan becomes a carrier of that symbol, whether or not they know which dark symbol of which history they are carrying.

However, football’s memory is strong. The ball is round, but memory does not move in a straight line. Sometimes, years later, it returns to the same stadium, the same slogan, the same fear. There is a straight line between what was said to Diyarbakırspor in Bursa in 2009 and the banners opened for Amedspor in 2023.

THE LIMITS OF TOLERANCE

That line shows not only two clubs but also the limits of tolerance towards an identity in Turkey. The anger brewed today because Amedspor reached the Süper Lig is not actually discomfort felt regarding the rise of a football club; it is the discomfort felt because an identity—which for years was desired to be kept below, on the margins, 'within acceptable limits'—is taking the centre stage.

This is why Amedspor’s arrival in the Süper Lig is not just a sporting success. It is also a mirror placed before the country’s football. Everyone will see their own face in this mirror: those who considered even a congratulation a risk, those who attacked the clubs that did congratulate, those who dismissed the White Toros banner as “terrace reaction,” those who hid behind the sentence “We have no problem with Kurds, but…”

In the end, the matter is as simple and as heavy as this: if this were only football, a congratulatory message would not generate this much anger. If this were only football, a team's name would not be so contested. If this were only football, the ghost of the White Toros would not be summoned to the stands.

It seems the match played on the pitch is one thing, and the game played in the stands is another. Amedspor has risen to the Süper Lig today, but with it, the suppressed memory of Turkish football has also returned to the top flight; and this time, the issue is not just who will win, but who in this country’s football pitch will be considered a human, who a target, who a citizen, and who a suspect coming after the “but.”

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Diyarbakırspor'dan Amedspor'a Türk sağının sahalara taşıdığı nefret dili, published in BirGün newspaper on May 5, 2026.