Turkey: President Gives Parliament a Red Card Over Match Fixing Legislation
A rare cooperative effort by the major parties in Turkey's parliament to amend a new law on football/soccer match fixing has been met by an equally rare veto by the country's president, leading to a vocal debate about the law and the intentions behind the vetoed legislative actions. The background to the story, from Hurriyet:
President Gül’s veto on a law reducing penalties for match fixers has driven a wedge between himself and Parliament while also dividing MPs of ruling party
A heated debate over an ongoing rigging scandal has engulfed Turkish politics with rifts beginning to emerge between the president and Parliament and within the ruling party on a law reducing penalties for match fixers.
President Abdullah Gül yesterday accused Parliament of not sufficiently working on the bill and strongly defended his veto on the law, which would have negated an earlier regulation stipulating harsh punishments against those who corrupt Turkish football. “I have realized an imbalance between the crime and the punishment. I have also seen that this law negated the deterrent effect [in match fixing],” Gül told reporters yesterday on the sidelines of a ceremony held at the Presidency.
The bill was vetoed in a rare move by Gül, who was elected as president in 2007 from the ranks of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Provisions in the existing law on violence in sports led to the launch of the match-fixing probe, resulting in a total of 31 football figures being jailed pending trial. If the amendments to the law had been accepted, the jail sentence of five to 12 years would have been reduced to between just one and three years.
Parliament had amended the only months-old law several weeks ago, in a move that critics claimed was done to save several football bigwigs who are currently charged with match fixing from having to face the possibility of serving serious prison sentences. (For more details on the case, which involves some of Turkey's biggest teams, take a look at this article.)
Legislators from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) have suggested that parliament will again approve the law as is and then send it back to Gul, who cannot veto the same law twice. For now, what is clear is that the effort to make life easier for corrupt football officials is one issue that the normally polarized Turkish parliament can agree on. “The world [of sports] is very dirty and strong at the same time. It managed to make parties in Parliament that cannot see eye to eye sit around a table on the same night," Mehmet Baransu, a columnist with Taraf recently wrote. "The parties passed the amendments very quickly and agreed on allowing the perpetuation of dirty practices in football.”
[UPDATE - Today's Zaman has an interesting new article that takes a look at how the match fixing debate is impacting the AKP. Read it here.]
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