Amedspor football club in Turkiye fined for pro-Kurdish propaganda'

Amedspor football club in Turkiye fined for pro-Kurdish propaganda'

Briefly

"Turkiye's main Kurdish football team has been fined for ideological propaganda in favour of Kurdish forces in northern Syria, the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) has said. Amedspor FC, which is based in Diyarbakir, the main city in the Kurdish-majority southeast, was fined 802,500 Turkish lira (nearly $18,500) and its president slapped with a 15-day suspension from all football activity, the TFF said in a statement late on Thursday."

"At issue was a 20-second clip on its social media accounts showing a woman having her hair braided set to a soundtrack featuring the widely used Kurdish slogan Jin, jiyan, azadi which means Woman, life, freedom. Over the past week, hair braiding has become a symbolic show of solidarity with Syrian Kurds as Damascus has pressed a military offensive in northeastern areas formerly part of the Kurds' de facto autonomous administration."

"In recent weeks, social media has been awash with clips of women braiding their hair in response to a video showing a Syrian soldier holding up a plait he claimed to have cut from a female Kurdish fighter in Raqqa that was recently taken by the Syrian military. Although the claim could not be independently verified, it caused an online backlash."