Turkey releases football supporters arrested for waving Kurdistan flag

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkish court on Tuesday decided to release five Kurdish men who were arrested earlier this week for raising the Kurdistan flag in the Kurdish city of Amed (Diyarbakir) in southeast Turkey during a football match. 

The Diyarbakir-based Amedspor club beat Bursaspor with a 2-0 victory on Sunday. Some of the supporters of the Kurdish football club waved the Kurdistan flag and held up pictures of Kurdish figures and Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, whose death in the custody of Iranian forces has sparked local international outrage over the last week. This angered the supporters of the other club and nationalist Turks on social media, with some of them claiming that they were not allowed by the security forces to take even coins to the stadium and wondered how the Kurds were able to take flags. 

Police arrested two Amedspor supporters later on Sunday and three others early Monday. However, they were all released on Tuesday with the condition to remain under judicial control, the Nationalist Youths of Kurdistran (CNK), told Rudaw English. 

The CNK, which promotes Kurdish identity in Turkey, organised the stadium activity of the Kurds and the arrested were its members. 

Mustafa Konuk, one of the arrested Amedspor fans, told Rudaw’s Mashallah Dakak after his release on Tuesday that they told the judges that what they did was not a crime. 

“They told us that the T-shirts we were wearing included colors which represent the terror organization. We told them that this is the symbol of our girl, Zhina Amini, who was brutally killed,” he said.  

The Turkish government often associates Kurdish symbols like the Kurdistan flag to Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), arresting those waving it for terror charges. However, some Turkish officials have welcomed Kurdistan Region’s officials with the same flag. 

The Kurdistan flag has also been present during Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) top officials’ meetings with their Turkish counterparts.

Konuk also said that some 10,000 people were saying “Biji Kurdistan” (Long live Kurdistan) in the stadium but only five of them were arrested, noting that they did not commit any crime. 

Hisyar Ozalp, a lawyer for the five people, told Rudaw on Monday that there have been similar cases in the past in which raising of Kurdistan flag was not seen as a crime but warned that the court decisions regarding his clients’ cases in the future might be affected by the reaction of natioalist Turks.