Kurdish footballer to end contract with Turkish club amid safety concerns

A Kurdish football player has decided to terminate his contract with a club in Turkey and remain in Germany over concerns for his safety and well-being.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – A Kurdish football player has decided to terminate his contract with a club in Turkey and remain in Germany over concerns for his safety and well-being, his lawyer said over the weekend.  

Deniz Naki, 28, said he wants to dissolve his contract with current club Amedspor in Turkey’s second-tier and stay in Germany as his lawyer underlined “massive security concerns” for the decision, German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.

“The decision was not easy,” Naki’s Frankfurt-based lawyer Stephan Kuhn told the German news agency. “Ultimately, his family and environment made that decision.”

Earlier this month, the 28-year-old footballer said he was lucky to be alive after his car was shot at while he was driving on a highway in Germany.

Naki, who is a well-known critic of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government’s anti-Kurdish policies, told German media a passing car fired shots at his vehicle near Duren, in western Germany, where the footballer grew up.

“One bullet struck a window—in the middle of my car—the other one hit near a tire,” he told German media. “I immediately ducked and then rolled right to the hard shoulder [of the freeway].”

German police said they were investigating the case and treating it as attempted murder. Naki said he believed the attack was politically motivated.

“I assume [the attack] was an MIT agent [Turkish secret service] or somebody else who doesn’t like my politics,” he stated. “I’m attacked on social media constantly.”

The Kurdish footballer has not been a stranger to controversy in the past.

Last April, a Turkish judge gave Naki a suspended jail sentence of 18 months, accusing him of “spreading terrorist propaganda” for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

In 2016, the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) handed him a 12-match ban for “ideological propaganda” linked to comments he made on social media in support of the Kurdish struggle in Turkey.