Earlier this month, Turkey’s highest court upheld the jail sentence of Aziz Yildirim, president of Fenerbahce, one of Turkey’s two top sports clubs, and a pronounced critic of the Fethullah Gulen movement. Yildirim will soon return to prison to serve a 26-month sentence.
In the wake of the court ruling, Yildirim argued that the match-fixing case in which he was convicted was a political trial with a political conclusion. He claims he was convicted by Gulenist-controlled police and special courts because of his anti-Gulen views.