Turkish prosecutors have ordered the detention of five Kocaelispor supporters over a racist display targeting fans of Kurdish football club Amedspor during a Süper Lig match on Monday, the Bianet news website reported.
The supporters waved yellow plastic bags toward the section occupied by Amedspor fans before Monday’s match in Kocaeli in northwestern Turkey, invoking body bags used for outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants killed in clashes with Turkish forces.
The imagery is used by some Turkish nationalist groups as a death threat against Kurds and pro-Kurdish figures.
Amedspor supporters responded by chanting “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî,” Kurdish for “Woman, Life, Freedom.”
The Kocaeli Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said it had launched an investigation into what it described as “provocative acts” directed at the opposing team’s supporters at the Kocaeli stadium.
The suspects are being investigated under Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code, which criminalizes incitement to hatred and hostility, and Article 14 of a law designed to prevent violence and disorder in sports, which covers threatening or insulting chants at sporting events.
Prosecutors said five suspects had been identified and that instructions had been issued for their detention.
The Diyarbakır Bar Association’s Human Rights Center also filed a criminal complaint over the display.
The association said it evoked images of conflict and violence, constituted a threat and targeted social peace.
It asked prosecutors to investigate those responsible for alleged violations of the law on violence in sports as well as incitement to hatred, publicly insulting a segment of society and making threats.
The center said it would monitor the legal proceedings.
Kocaelispor won the match 2-0.
Amedspor repeatedly targeted
Amedspor is based in Diyarbakır, the largest city in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast. The club adopted its current name in 2014, using Amed, the Kurdish name for Diyarbakır.
The club and its supporters have repeatedly faced racist and nationalist abuse at away matches as well as accusations that they support the outlawed PKK, designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.
The PKK waged a four-decade armed insurgency against the Turkish state in a conflict that claimed more than 40,000 lives.
During a second-division match against Bursaspor in March 2023, Amedspor players were physically attacked and the targets of objects thrown from the stands. Bursaspor supporters also displayed images associated with extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of Kurds in the 1990s.
At the time, far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli praised Bursaspor supporters for what he called their “national stance” and rejected the legitimacy of Amedspor’s name.
“As far as I’m concerned, there’s no place called Amed, so we can’t talk about Amedspor,” Bahçeli said.
He adopted a markedly different tone after Amedspor secured promotion to the Süper Lig for the first time in May.
In a congratulatory message to club chairman Nahit Eren, Bahçeli called the promotion a “valuable development” for Diyarbakır and Turkish football and said the club could contribute to Turkey’s “climate of peace, unity and solidarity.”
The shift came amid a renewed initiative aimed at ending the conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK.
Jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan called on the group in February 2025 to lay down its arms and dissolve itself. The PKK announced its dissolution three months later, ending its decades-long armed campaign.
Similar yellow-bag imagery has previously prompted criminal investigations.
In May 2025 İstanbul prosecutors launched an investigation after the youth branch of the far-right, anti-immigrant Victory Party shared yellow-bag-themed social media posts following the death of pro-Kurdish politician and parliamentary deputy speaker Sırrı Süreyya Önder.
This article is republished from Turkish Minute.
