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Turkish soccer team's fans accused of plotting coup

Partisans of the Besiktas soccer club joined a demonstration in Istanbul in 2013.

By Ed Adamczyk
The 2013 Gezi Park protests in Istanbul (CC/ wikimedia.org/ Flashstorm)
The 2013 Gezi Park protests in Istanbul (CC/ wikimedia.org/ Flashstorm)

ISTANBUL, Turkey, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- Fans of a Turkish soccer team, who joined an anti-government protest in 2013, went on trial Tuesday in Istanbul, charged with attempting a coup of the government.

Supporters of Istanbul's Besiktas soccer club, who are called Carsi after the market in the neighborhood of the stadium, participated in demonstrations against the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the city's Gezi Park with hundreds of thousands of other protesters. They were indicted a year later. Thirty-five now face life imprisonment if convicted of attempting to remove the government through violence.

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Fans of the team, carrying Carsi banners with the encircled-A emblem denoting anarchy, marched to the courthouse Tuesday in solidarity with the accused, shouting and lighting flares. Inside the court, some defense lawyers wore the Bestikas' black-and-white soccer jersey.

"If we had the power to carry out a coup, we would make Besiktas the champion," said Cem Yakiskan, a supporter of the accused, after the charges were read in court, the Wall Street Journal reported. Besiktas' most recent league title came in 2009.

"The prosecution of 35 football fans on coup-plot charges is a blatant misuse of the criminal justice system. The evidence in the Istanbul prosecutor's September 2014 indictment against the 35 consists of intercepted telephone calls and text messages, the defendants' possession of gas masks and goggles to avoid teargas, and video footage showing that the fans were at the demonstrations, along with thousands of others," a statement from the activist group Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

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The trial comes two days after 27 people, including Ekrem Dumanli, editor of Today's Zaman, Turkey's largest newspaper, were arrested on similar charges.

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