This season has been a complete failure for the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) and the Central Refereeing Committee (MHK) as now no one in the industry trusts them. Teams have continuously manipulated refereeing mistakes in their favor and now there is literally no referee left who has not been accused of fraud. Nevertheless, neither the TFF nor the MHK has taken the necessary actions to prevent teams from creating this chaos, they have let the big guns of Turkish football destroy their referees one by one. It seems like the cat is already out of the bag for Turkish football, and what once only disturbed "idealists" like me now disturbs everyone. What must be done to reverse this catastrophe is very simple, Turkish football, as it is now, should be stopped.
Just look at these headlines after last weekend's Super League games. NTV commentator Rıdvan Dilmen: "They (TFF) murdered Turkish football. The only unjust football in the world is played here in Turkey." Konyaspor manager Aykut Kocaman: "Let us rename the league as the Big Guns League. They are protected by the referees each and every week." Başakşehir chairman Göksel Gümüşdağ: "I trust my team but I do not trust factors outside of the pitch." The list goes on and the accusations of fraud never cease. The question here is this: What will change this situation in the next season?
Apparently, TFF and MHK are waiting for a miracle to start a fresh season after the summer as they have not outlined a plan to do so currently. They did not even publicly protect their referees once or stated that the accusations are baseless. Thus, it is obvious that these institutions have no idea about how they are going to solve this issue and re-establish order and justice in Turkish football. Thus there is only one way to get out of this mess: We need to start all over again.
Whether we like it or not, Turkish football, as it is now, will collapse financially in a short period of time. As I warned hundreds of times in this column, the debt of the clubs is beyond manageability and even a giant like Fenerbahçe had to hold a fundraising event to not get banned by UEFA. But as we all know, neither by retiring referees nor by organizing charity bazaars can Turkish football be saved from its catastrophic destiny. We need to transform all of the institutions of Turkish football, but since they are programmed to serve the shrewd businessmen of Turkish clubs, they cannot do it by themselves. They are too busy keeping the strongest of the league happy and making sure that they will not complain about them.
Hence we need state intervention to solve this problem, as the fans are also happy when the referee calls are in their favor. We need to build a new TFF, MHK etc. which will not serve the strongest, but serve the common good and do justice for Turkish football. To do that, we must first get rid of the old, toxic institutions and shrewd businessmen, regardless of the short-term cost.
