Fan club çArşı wins this game

The Beşiktaş football fan club çArşı is a unique one with many unique acts. Its demonstrations carry small subtle messages filled with pangs of intelligence. Their cheers are humorous; their social campaigns are sentimental. For example, they went naked in the middle of winter to shiver together with Van earthquake victims. 

The court case in which çArşı is accused of trying to stage a coup against the government is equally humorous. You must have read their replies to the accusations against them in papers. A talented screenwriter could make a beautiful film out of them.

çArşı, which has been accused of becoming a terrorist organization, has the slogan “çArşı is against everything.” In 2008, it carried this slogan further to say “çArşı is also against itself.”

Well, çArşı does not have a leader or an organization chart written on paper or a computer. On the street, there are more çArşı fans than Beşiktaş fans. It has been said over and over again: çArşı is not an organization, it is a spirit. There is no membership or a code name given to you, but there are many nicknames such as “optic,” “camel” or “yellow.”

So, let’s look at the indictment. There are five major faults in the case against çArşı:

1-    The judge hearing the çArşı case is Metin Tamirci, who is the same judge who ruled for a retrial for the Chair of Fenerbahçe Football Club Aziz Yıldırım in the match-fixing case. This judge has been transferred from the peace criminal court to the high criminal court. He is known to “misunderstand” several words while appending to the record.

2-    The phone records belonging to two separate investigations opened against fans even before the Gezi...