Turkish football authorities fined the main Kurdish club and banned one of its players after a goal celebration in which the player made a braid in his hair in apparent solidarity with a hair-braiding campaign linked to Kurdish groups in Syria, while a court the same day ordered the arrest of a 16-year-old student over a social media post tied to the same campaign.
According to the Evrensel daily, the board fined Amedspor 600,000 Turkish lira ($19,000) and banned midfielder Çekdar Orhan for five official matches over the celebration during a February 1 second-tier league match against Adana Demirspor.
Turkey’s football authorities said the penalties were imposed on the grounds of “ideological propaganda,” without providing further details. Amedspor, widely regarded as the country’s main Kurdish football club and based in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, has previously faced disciplinary action over political symbolism at matches.
Orhan marked his goal by making a braid his hair, a gesture linked to an online campaign that began earlier this month after a video circulated from the Syrian city of Raqqa showing a man holding up a woman’s cut braid and claiming it belonged to a fighter from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Although the claim could not be independently verified, it sparked an online backlash.
In response, women in Turkey posted videos of themselves braiding their hair, describing the campaign as an act of solidarity and a protest against what they said was the humiliation and targeting of Kurdish women as Damascus has pressed a military offensive in northeastern areas formerly part of the Kurds’ de facto autonomous administration.
According to the Bold Medya news website, police detained a 16-year-old high school student identified only by the initials A.K. on Friday morning in the western city of Izmir over a social media post that included a video of her braiding her hair along with a song and a photograph, the student’s lawyer said. A court later the same day arrested the student on accusations of spreading “terrorist propaganda” and ordered her transfer to Sakran Juvenile detention facility pending trial.
Prosecutors allege the post constituted propaganda for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), while defense lawyer Edhem Kurus said the content was part of the broader online solidarity campaign and argued that the arrest of a minor over social media activity raised concerns about proportionality, children’s rights and freedom of expression.
