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4th March 2019
04:56pm GMT
Turkish football club Sakaryaspor have claimed that their players were attacked by a Amed SK player with a sharp object - believed to be a razor blade - during a game between the two local rivals on Saturday.
According to reports, Amed SK midfielder Mansur Calar concealed a sharp object in his hands during the pre-game handshakes, which he then used to cut several of the Sakaryaspor players before the game kicked off.
Local television footage shows the player using the object to swipe at opposition defender Ferhat Yazgan as he was facing the other direction, before later grabbing the Sakaryaspor captain around the throat.
https://twitter.com/yenisafakspor/status/1102244190803628033
Yazgan later took to Instagram to showcase the injuries sustained during the apparent attack from Calar, which led to a lengthy fracas between both sets of players and resulted in two receiving red cards before the match had even started.
[caption id="attachment_222060" align="alignnone" width="572"]
Ferit Erişçi Instagram[/caption]
After the game, which finished 1-1 with both goals coming from penalty kicks, Sakaryaspor reported the attack to the police, claiming that the referee did nothing to intervene.
"After the match, our players were taken to hospital and it was proved that those cuts were caused as a result of an assault with a sharp object," a Sakaryaspor statement said.
"The issue is completely in the hands of the justice system."
Amed SK have responded with a statement of their own, accusing both Sakaryaspor and the local television broadcaster of taking part in a 'smear campaign' against the club. They claim that it would have been impossible for Calar to smuggle the sharp object onto the pitch before the game and that the news company purposely placed their watermark over the footage to deliberately make the image inconclusive.
Amedspor also released footage on their official Twitter account of their dressing room being attacked by a mob of rival supporters before the game, according to local news site Kurdistan 24.
They also say that both the Sakaryaspor management and fans verbally and physically harassed their players before and after the match.
https://twitter.com/AmedsporSK/status/1051184769483063296
The cause of the hostility between the clubs is believed to be due to events during the reverse fixture earlier in the season, when nationalistic songs glorifying the Turkish army were played in Sakaryaspor's stadium in Adapazari. Amedspor represents Diyarbakir, the most prominent Kurdish-populated city in Turkey, and the songs were played at a time when the Turkish army was conducting military operations in northern Syria against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militia group.
