It cannot be explained away by individual mistakes

Sports Service

In Türkiye we are at a point where the decay has erupted in football too. The “betting in football” investigation that has been talked about for weeks now presents a picture too big to be brushed aside as the “wrong choices” of a few individuals. In the investigation carried out by the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, 20 of the 39 people detained, including Galatasaray player Metehan Baltacı, Fenerbahçe captain Mert Hakan Yandaş, Konyaspor player Alassane Ndao, former Adana Demirspor President Murat Sancak and Ankaraspor President Ahmet Okatan were arrested. As of yesterday, one of the 8 people in the file who had an arrest warrant, Abdurrahman Bayram who played for Trabzonspor before transferring to Sakaryaspor, went to the prosecutor’s office in Trabzon and turned himself in. Thus another link in the chain that appeared “on the run” in the first phase of the investigation was added to the file.

On the judicial side of the investigation, the picture is grave: the magistrates’ court arrested a long list of people ranging from executive Emrah Çelik from Antalya to former Adana Demirspor boss Murat Sancak and active players in various leagues such as Mert Hakan Yandaş, Metehan Baltacı, Alassane Ndao, Kerem Yusuf Sirkeci, Emircan Çiçek, Faruk Can Genç and İzzet Furkan Malak. On the referees’ side, top tier referee Zorbay Küçük is among those previously released under judicial control. Judicial control measures such as signature requirements and travel bans are also being applied to many players and executives named in the same file.

A WIDE NETWORK

So today we are faced with a network that brings together in the same file players who take the field in the Süper Lig title race and pundits who deliver “clean football” speeches on television and that stretches down to the lower leagues, amateur clubs and even local politics. The referral letter of the prosecutor’s office and the MASAK reports in the file show the scale of the money and betting traffic around some of the people at the centre of the investigation.

It has been determined that more than 200 million lira flowed in and out of Fenerbahçe captain Mert Hakan Yandaş’s bank accounts after 2017 and that he sent 4,453,000 lira to Ersen Dikmen between December 2021 and October 2025, and that Dikmen transferred a large part of this money to legal betting sites in a short time. Digital examinations in the file include images of betting slips placed by Yandaş on many matches, including Fenerbahçe games in which he played, and the prosecution therefore treats this as “actions aimed at influencing match results”.

One of the slips in the investigation file even contains a special bet on another Fenerbahçe player, İsmail Yüksek, receiving a card. In the WhatsApp messages in the file, it is seen that Yandaş sent messages to a group of friends along the lines of “if it doesn’t come in and I don’t delete this I am not human”, normalising risky slips as “excitement”.

This picture undermines the line about “players who only play the pools with small amounts”. In a setting where millions of lira change hands and a player bets on his own team’s match or even on his team-mate’s card, every decision, every pass, every foul on the pitch is now under a shadow. One of the most striking parts of the investigation is the MASAK report drawn up on former Adana Demirspor president Murat Sancak. According to the report, after 2017 Sancak received a total of 1,226,831,677 lira in 1,157 transactions and sent 1,197,469,550 lira in 8,799 transactions, excluding internal transfers between his own accounts.

It is stated that a significant part of these movements took place between companies in which Sancak is a partner and Adana Demirspor Club and its affiliated companies. The fact that the same Sancak appeared on screens years ago saying in broadcasts “bahis çok büyük bir pazar, silah ticareti gibi” now sits alongside the MASAK lines and lays bare the football market relationship.

According to a report by Seyhan Avşar from Gerçek Gündem, the MASAK report points to a similar picture in the case of former referee and football pundit Ahmet Çakar. It has been found that since 2017 there have been inflows of 60,972,890 lira and outflows of 58,269,147 lira to and from Çakar’s account. According to the report, Çakar appears to have sent around 17 million lira in 1,830 transactions to Misli, a legal betting company, and received about 3.3 million lira in return. The same file also contains records of card payments to foreign betting sites in previous years and of hundreds of different slips.

SPECIAL TREATMENT FOR ÇAKAR

It had been stated that the detention order for Çakar was lifted due to health problems and that he would be taken to court once his treatment was completed. Çakar was discharged yesterday. The prosecution instructed the police to bring Çakar to court in custody after his treatment is completed depending on his state of health. So some of the faces who talk about “the morality of football” on television screens are today in the prosecutor’s file as actors at the very centre of the betting traffic.

In the background of this judicial investigation, the disciplinary process run by the TFF has also expanded. The TFF Legal Counsel has referred 22 referees and 27 players in the professional leagues who were found to have bet to the PFDK with precautionary measures. Previously on 28 October action had been taken against 152 referees before the same board. At a press conference held in the USA, TFF President İbrahim Hacıosmanoğlu defended the process with the claim of “leaving clean football for tomorrow” saying “as the operations deepen the sense of panic grows”.

On the other hand objections by AKP MPs to the timing of the investigation are also on the agenda. AKP Eskişehir MP Nebi Hatipoğlu criticised the referral of seven Eskişehirspor players to discipline by asking "Was this week the time, just before the most crucial match of the season?" This outburst shows that while the federation is carrying out a “clean hands” operation it is not free of political pressure and score settling.

The picture that has emerged is in fact not new, it is only the latest football version of a decay that has merely become visible. The culture of arbitrariness, favouritism and impunity we see in education, the judiciary and local government has naturally enveloped football too. On one side there are legal betting companies encouraged by the state and brands like iddaa that have become the most visible sponsors in the stands, on the other there are players, most of them insecure, whose whole hope of making a living depends on a contract. In an industry turned by billion lira broadcasting tenders and betting deals, a lower league player backing “the opponent to win” in his own match or a Super League star putting a slip on his friend getting a card has stopped being surprising and has almost become a natural extension of the system. For this reason the 20 people arrested today under the heading of “betting” of course bear individual responsibility but cannot on their own be turned into scapegoats. The real question is this, who created the climate that so easily pushed referees, players and executives into the betting swamp.

23 PERCENT OF SOCIETY PLAYS

BirGün columnist and academic Müslüm Gülhan spoke to BirGün TV about the betting investigation:

The sums of money being talked about are really very large amounts. What we are talking about here is a separate flow of money that runs outside the existing system. Worldwide the volume of illegal betting is 1.7 trillion dollars. In Türkiye the total of legal and illegal betting is between 50 and 70 billion dollars. These figures are on an incredible scale. Moreover this money does not circulate only in Türkiye, there is a mechanism in which it is transferred through banks after various laundering processes via Kıbrıs, Güney Kıbrıs, Londra, Belarus and Dubai. So how did the issue get from here to players and coaches. This situation gives the impression of a “mop-up”. Why. Because we think that in the background the scale of the money we are talking about and where these transactions reach is not fully known. It is not very realistic to uncover the money passing through players, coaches and some writers and present this as if it were a big operation. First it is necessary to examine how football has been instrumentalised in Türkiye and its structural problems. Unless the structural problem is solved the operations carried out against illegal betting will not fully hit the mark. In Türkiye 7 million people play legal betting and 12 million people play illegal betting. In total 19 million people are in this organisation, which corresponds to about 23 percent of the population. We also observe that people are playing.

WHY IS THERE SO MUCH INTEREST

First of all football has been instrumentalised in Türkiye and emptied out structurally. With the move to neoliberal policies after 1980 football was turned into an area where capital accumulation was consolidated. A similar process took place in line with the global trend. Football was made part of the culture industry and very large amounts of capital began to circulate. But this money belongs neither to the clubs nor to individuals. When the clubs entered such a large capital structure many forces such as the mafia, religious communities and politics turned towards this area. In Türkiye the size of the football market is 1.6 to 1.7 billion euro. The revenue is about 700 million euro. There is a serious gap in between. Who is this money going to and where is it going. The main problem is the lack of a sound database.

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Mıntıka temizliği ile geçiştirilemez, published in BirGün newspaper on December 10, 2025.