ANKARA, Nov 23 (AFP) - The fatal stabbing of a teenage fan in an Istanbul stadium has created uproar in Turkey, where parliament was to meet Tuesday to try to curb growing football-related violence blamed as much on urban social phenomena as on dodgy practices by clubs.
Violence is not new to Turkish football, but the death of 16-year-old Cahit Aktas has had unprecedented impact on public opinion, perhaps because of the the profiles of victim and aggressor.
Aktas, a supporter of Besiktas, a major Istanbul club, had travelled to the city from Adana in southern Turkey, where he worked as a waiter to finance his high school studies, to visit relatives.
It was his first time in a big-league football stadium.
The man who confessed to the killing, 22-year-old Fatih Sozuer, who has a record of armed aggression and drug abuse, according to police, was also a Besiktas fan.
Press reports said he was a regular at the stadium, where he was one of a crowd of hooligans allowed in for free by the club management.
Sozuer told police he lost his temper when Aktas jostled him near the crowded concession stands; he pulled out a knife concealed in his shoe and stabbed the teenager in the chest and groin.
He then went to his seat and clamly watched Besiktas and Caykur Rizespor draw 2-2.
The killing was not directly football-related, but many sportswriters had been warning for months that the clubs' practice of overcrowding the stands with gangs of hooligans to intimidate rival teams and their fans would lead to disaster.
Turkish football, already accused of match-fixing, corruption and links to organized crime, was discussed at Monday's government meeting here and will now be put under the microsocope by Turkey's parliament, which was sitting Tuesday to look into the allegations and the Aktas murder.
In an emergency meeting late Monday, the football federation announced drastic measures: Besiktas will play its next three home games without spectators.
The federation also ruled that there will be no more freebies -- all tickets will be numbered and sold -- and clubs will no longer be allowed to take carloads of fans -- mostly club-protected hooligans -- to away games.
The latter ruling was inspired by a match Saturday in the Black Sea port of Trabzon between the local team and Fenerbahce, another top Istanbul club.
Over the past years, matches between the two in Trabzon have invariably resulted in pitched battles and riots. The stakes were even higher this time: Fenerbahce tops the league, but Trabzon is chasing hard and a home win would have seen it taking first place.
But when the Fenerbahce management left fans at home, not only was there no violence, the Trabzon crowd applauded the Istanbul side when it beat the home team despite being down to 10 men.
The particularity of Besiktas, Turkey's oldest football club, is that their hooligans target each other more than they do rival fans: they are divided into factions that hate each other and enjoy the support of cliques competing for power in the club's management.
The so-called "covered stands" of Besiktas's home ground, where Aktas was stabbed on Sunday, are the site of free-for-alls fights at every game despite being reserved for home fans only.
As the stadium killing overflowed from the sports sections to front pages and editorials, one question was how all this would reflect on Turkey's bid to join the European Union, whose leaders will decide at a December 17 summit if and when to invite Turkey to the negoting table.
Not to worry, wrote one columnist: football hooliganism is an invention of Margaret Thatcher's Britain, spawned by a widening gap between rich and poor.
Other Turkish commentators recalled the fatal stabbing of two Leeds football fans during a fixture in Istanbul in 2001.
11/23/2004 13:22 GMT - AFP