Ultras haben nach Einschätzung von Experte Mubarak gestürzt - «Diese Leute sind furchtlos»

(dapd - Interview) Ultras haben nach Einschätzung von Experte Mubarak gestürzt - «Diese Leute sind furchtlos» -- Von Johannes Ehrmann --.

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3 February 2012

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Berlin/Singapur (dapd). Der Nahost-Fußballexperte James M. Dorsey sieht die blutigen Ausschreitungen im Fußballstadion von Port Said als Fortsetzung des Machtkampfs um die Neugestaltung Ägyptens. «Was sich in Port Said abgespielt hat, war politisch», sagte Dorsey der Nachrichtenagentur dapd. «Fußball in Ägypten ist per definitionem politisch. Eine Polizeimacht, die nicht an Sicherheit, sondern an der Verbesserung ihres Ansehens interessiert ist, ist per definitionem politisch.» Dies sei jedoch seit dem Sturz von Ex-Machthaber Husni Mubarak der Fall.

Dorsey ist Universitätsprofessor in Singapur und betreibt das Blog «The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer». Nach dem Mittwochabend sei die entscheidende Frage: «War es ein Konflikt, der aus dem Ruder gelaufen ist oder aber bewusst herbeigeführt wurde? Ich habe zunehmend das Gefühl, das zweite ist der Fall», sagte Dorsey. Der regierende Militärrat habe möglicherweise ein Interesse an den Krawallen gehabt.

Ultra-Gruppen der großen Fußballvereine seien am Umsturz des alten Regimes maßgeblich beteiligt gewesen. «Es waren Jugendgruppen und es waren Ultras, die Mubarak gestürzt haben», sagte Dorsey der dapd. Dabei hätten selbst die beiden großen Kairoer Verein Al-Ahly und Zamalek ihre Feindschaft zeitweise vergessen: «Es gibt nur eines, was größer war als der Hass zwischen Al-Ahly und Zamalek: Der Hass auf das Regime.»

Dorsey wollte die 74 Toten vom Mittwoch ins Verhältnis gesetzt wissen. Es sei zweifellos die größte Katastrophe im ägyptischen Fußball und die größte seit dem Sturz Mubaraks gewesen, sagte er. Doch ägyptische Ultras seien auch an der Stürmung der israelischen Botschaft mit drei Toten im September und an Protesten auf dem Tahrir-Platz im November beteiligt gewesen seien, bei denen Dutzende Menschen getötet und Tausende weitere verwundet worden waren. Durch das Wiederaufflammen der Gewalt im Herbst hätten auch die Ultras an Unterstützung in der breiten Bevölkerung verloren, die zunehmend «demonstrationsmüde» sei und zur Normalität zurückkehren wolle.

Die exzellent organisierte Ultra-Bewegung sei das Rückgrat der Protestierenden gewesen. «Sie haben eine wichtige Rolle dabei gespielt, die Barriere der Angst zu durchbrechen», sagte der Experte. «Sie waren die Verteidigungslinie der Bewegung. Sie waren vorbereitet. Sie hatten Zwillen und Teams, die ständig Projektile lieferten.»

Wie es nun weitergehe, sei noch nicht abzusehen. «Die Ultras sind nach Port Said unglaublich wütend. Diese Leute sind furchtlos. Wenn es sie ihr Leben kostet, dann kostet es sie eben ihr Leben. Es macht ihnen nichts aus und die Polizei respektiert sie dafür.» Wenn die Ultras öffentliche Unterstützung bekämen, wonach es derzeit aussehe, sei die Frage, «welchen Preis das Militär zu zahlen bereit» sei. «Das Militär hat bewiesen, dass es weit geht. Und die Ultras haben bewiesen, dass sie sehr viel einstecken können.»

Leider hätten die Ereignisse des vergangenen Jahres gezeigt, dass es ohne Demonstrationen und Blutvergießen in der Region keine Veränderungen geben könne. «Es ist kein schönes Bild, aber nicht notwendigerweise ein pessimistisches», sagte Dorsey.

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Port Said boosts youth and soccer demands for civilian rule in Egypt

Tahrir protest in the wake of Port Said

By James M. Dorsey

A growing public sentiment that the brawl in which 74 people were killed in Port Said was deliberately provoked is putting new wind in the sails of militant soccer fan and youth groups who have been battling the military and security forces for much of the past year since the ousting of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

As thousands across Egypt joined the youth and soccer groups in protests in the wake of what they see as the planned killing of members of Ultras Ahlawy, the militant soccer fan group of storied Cairo club Al Ahly SC, immediately after the team’s surprising defeat in Port Said by Al Masri SC, the jury of Egyptian public opinion was rendering its verdict on what happened in Port Said with its feet.

Ultras Ahlawy together with its arch rival Ultras White Knights (UWK), street-battle hardened supporters of Cairo’s crowned Zamalek SC, played a key role in the protests that led to Mr. Mubarak’s departure. They demanded in violent clashes in recent months the return of the country’s military rulers to their barracks.

Much of the youth and soccer groups’ criticism of the post-Mubarak transition rings true even if does not resonate with a majority of the population. They accuse the military of subverting a promised transition to real democracy in a bid to preserve its political and economic perks and interests and employing to do so the same if not worse repressive measures than the Mubarak regime. Scores have been killed in protests since Mubarak’s downfall, thousands injured and some 12,000 people, including activists, bloggers and soccer fans dragged in front of military courts.

For much of the past years, the fearless ultras were revered for their militant support for their clubs, their years of confrontation in the stadiums of Mr. Mubarak’s hated police and security forces, and their manning on Cairo’s Tahrir Square of the front lines in January and February of last year during the attacks on protesters by police and Mubarak loyalists.

That public support had started to wane however by the time of the vicious street battles in November and December of last year near Tahrir Square in which some 50 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded.

Egyptians had grown weary of the ultras’ militant street tactics, contentious politics and radical demands and retained confidence in the military despite its brutality. Frustrated that the toppling of Mr. Mubarak had not produced immediate tangible economic fruit, a majority yearned for a return to normalcy to allow Egypt to recover economically. They had opted for electoral politics even if that meant the filling of the country’s political vacuum by vested interests

If the deaths in Port Said were intended to further isolate the militant soccer fan and youth groups, circumstantial evidence that the incident was provoked is back firing with the military on the one hand cracking down on demonstrators and on the other hand unsuccessfully seeking to project itself as the protector of football supporters and the independent investigator into what sparked the incident.

The evidence that includes Twitter warnings in advance of the match in Port Said; the presence in the stadium of a group of unknown, alleged Al Masri supporters armed with batons and knives; the locking of stadium entrances that usually were open so that people could not escape; and the fact that soccer violence is usually initiated by supporters of the losing rather than the winning team certainly when the winner is a mouse like Al Masri defeating a giant like Al Ahly may not be firm enough to stand up in court. With Egyptians taking to the streets, it doesn’t have to.

A statement by the Muslim Brotherhood earlier this week that an “invisible” hand had been involved in Port Said suggested that the group that won the first post-Mubarak parliamentary election was aligning itself with the Egyptian public’s verdict and leveraging the incident in its effort to reduce the role of the military in the transition to democracy.

The lack of security in the Port Said stadium “confirms that there is invisible planning that is behind this unjustified massacre. The authorities have been negligent. We fear that some officers are punishing the people for their revolution and for depriving them of their ability to act as tyrants and restricting their privileges," the Brotherhood said in a statement on its website.

While it is unlikely that the Brotherhood at this point will join the protests, it has demonstrated in the past that its ability to mobilize people can make or break public manifestations.

The deaths in Port Said have left the ultras – modeled on similar groups in Italy and Serbia – who bear a deep-seated hatred of the police because of the violence and the abuse they were exposed to in almost four years of weekly battles in stadiums during soccer seasons angry, ever more determined and eager for a fight.

It has also put ultra leaders who were seeking to reign in their ranks swelled over the years by thousands of young, disaffected, often less educated and unemployed fans whose raison d’etre increasingly is revenge. While it has boosted the leaders’ efforts to set aside the deep-seated animosity between the rival ultra groups that in the past year has only been superseded by their opposition to the regime, it has also highlighted their difficulty in controlling their ranks.

Theirs is as much a battle for karama or dignity as it is part of the fight to hold the military to its pledge to lead the country to democracy. Their dignity is vested in their ability to stand up to the dakhliya, the interior ministry that is in the wake of Port Said the focal point of the protests; the knowledge that they no longer can be abused by security forces without recourse; and the fact that they no longer have to pay off each and every policemen to stay out of trouble.

At the core of the ultras’ defiance is the instinctive learning of the lessons of the failures of Arab revolutionaries in the 1970s and 1980s expressed by prominent Syrian poet Adonis and Marxist ideologue Yasin Al-Hafiz whose calls for leaving no stone in society unturned were stymied by autocratic leaders cloaked in the mantle of Arab nationalism.

“Cairo’s Tahrir Square is in a certain sense the paradigm for all the other Tahrir Squares in the Arab world” said prominent Syrian intellectual Sadik Al-Azm in a lecture late last year at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), describing it as resistance to persistent efforts by ancien regimes in the Middle East and North Africa to effectively retain some degree of power.

Paradoxically, there is a shared sense between security forces and ultras that for the first time in five years of on-going battles it is the interior ministry security forces as much as the soccer fans fighting for their own survival. The police’s tarnished image as enforcers of a brutal regime remains unchanged a year after Mubarak’s downfall and, if anything, had been reinforced by the military’s refusal to hold police officers accountable for their brutality despite pressure from the public as well as reform-minded security personnel.

As a result, the reduced presence of security in the Port Said stadium doesn’t come as a surprise. Amid rising crime rates, police were often absent from the streets and stadiums in the last year more concerned about avoiding clashes that would tarnish their image than in maintaining security and hoping that incidents would prove that they were needed to prevent the country from descending into chaos and anarchy.

Amid the tear gas and the smoke on the embattled streets in front of Cairo’s Interior Ministry, ultra leaders were in recent days unsuccessfully trying to gain maximum advantage from renewed public empathy by seeking to limit slogans to events in Port Said. The Guardian quoted an Ultras Ahlawy leader as trying to persuade a militant to remove a sign attacking Egypt’s military rulers. "Take that sign down. We don't want to blame SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) today. Politics can wait," the leader said.

Ultra leaders have learnt from their failed public relations campaign in the wake of the street battles in November and December that it wouldn’t be that easy to regain public support. Youth activists and soccer fans in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis erected in December projector screens to show residents looking down from their balconies with little sense of engagement videos of what they see as the military's abuse of power "Why are you silent? Have you won your rights already?" the revolutionaries shouted at them in frustration.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Egypt's Soccer Tragedy: Prelude to a Military Crackdown?

Thursday, Feb. 02, 2012

By James M. Dorsey, Time Magazine

The defiance and bluster among Egypt's militant soccer fans following the death of at least 74 people in a stadium in Port Said betrayed a sense of foreboding: The "ultras" — the hardcore fans who express their team identity in street battles with rival fans as much as by cheering from the bleachers — are bracing themselves for an existential confrontation with the security forces.

Five years of almost weekly confrontations with the security forces, inside stadiums and then, over the past year, in Tahrir Square and the streets of major cities in the course of the rebellion that forced out President Hosni Mubarak, have left the ultras with open accounts to settle, and with reason to believe they're being targeted by the authorities. And that sense has hardened their resolve to fight. (See pictures of the soccer riot.)

The tragedy in Port Said where fans of the highly popular Cairo club Al Ahly SC clashed with those of Port Said's Al Masry SC, has prompted a frenzy of speculation alleging a setup by the authorities to undermine the ultras popularity and break their bare-knuckled resistance to continued military rule in Egypt. The truth behind the incident may never be definitively established, and could well lie somewhere between assertions that the fans themselves instigated the violence, and allegations that they were deliberately provoked.

One of the great untold stories of the revolution that overthrew Mubarak is the fact that football ultras were the rebellion's shock troops. The historic hatred between supporters of Al Ahly, founded in the early 20th century as the club of nationalist opponents of British colonial rule, and its arch rival rival Zamalek, the club of the Brits, their Egyptian allies and the monarchy, was eclipsed only by their loathing of Mubarak and his security forces. When the revolt began, they set aside their differences in a common fight against the dictator. (MORE: What's Behind Egyptian Soccer's Bloodiest Day?)

Fearless and feared, battle-hardened from years of fighting the police, the ultras were in the vanguard that broke through police barricades on January 25 of last year, the first day of the anti-Mubarak protests, creating the breach that allowed protesters to occupy Cairo's Tahrir Square. That was a milestone moment in helping Egyptians break the first barrier of fear of the consequences of publicly expressing their rejection of the Mubarak regime.

Once on the Square, they applied their knowledge of street warfare to hold it: It was the ultras that manned the outer perimeter and entrances to the Square, and with ferocious resolve and impressive tactical discipline they repelled the attacks by security forces and Mubarak loyalists that followed, hurling rocks and projectiles at security forces, throwing tear gas grenades back into the ranks of the police and convincing protesters around them to stand their ground in the face of the regime's assault.

In the months that followed, the ultras were also in the forefront of storming the offices of Mubarak's hated Central Security Force (CSF), the September ransacking in September of the Israeli embassy in Cairo, the bitter street battles in November and December in the vicinity of Tahrir that left more than 50 people dead and more than 1,000 wounded, and repeated clashes in stadiums that prompted Egypt's soccer association, at the instigation of the Interior Ministry, to penalize the clubs.

Yet, as the majority of Egyptians grew weary of protests and yearned for normalcy and economic recovery as the year wore on, the ultras began to lose popularity. The revolutionary youth protestors that had been at the core of the revolt still looked to the soccer fans as their protectors, but that simply put them together on the losing side of the competition between confrontational street politics that sought to sweep away the remnants of the regime, including the Mubarak-appointed generals that currently rule Egypt, and the electoral politics and associated political horse trading that put the initiative in the hands of the military, and of long-established opposition groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood who had the experience, skills and organization to dominate at the polls. (See pictures of protests in Egypt.)

In some ways, the ultra organizations — often founded by educated, highly-politicized students and professionals, many of whom proclaimed themselves anarchists — were victims of their own success. Their ranks swelled with thousands of less-educated, disaffected and often unemployed youths motivated less by politics than by a desire to repay the security forces for years of abuse and mistreatment.

The warning signs had been there for some time. Ultras stormed the pitch in April last year in the first African championship match between Zamalek and Tunisia's Esperance Sportieve du Tunis played in Cairo in front of a crowd admitted free of charge. Police presence that day had been minimal; for the first time in their history, the ultras owned the stadium. In the 90th minute of a game that was hard to follow through the fog of fireworks, flares and smoke guns, the fans led by a charismatic uneducated young man stormed the pitch in protest against a decision by the referee that would have cost Zamalek the game.

Leaders of the Zamalek ultra group were stunned, and admitted that they had lost control that day last April. Then, as in the wake of Wednesday's Port Said debacle, the police were accused of staying away to encourage an incident that could be used to demonstrate the need for harsh police action. In Port Said, many ultras believe, the military shared that objective, seeking to undermine the standing of some of their most militant challengers.

Al Ahly and Zamalek had been scheduled to play one another on February 7 (the authorities have now canceled all games until further notice), and the ultra leadership on both sides had recently declared that they would not fight one another, but instead reserve their rage for the common enemy. In a statement on its Facebook page the Zamalek ultras, Ultras White Knights (UWK) called on their Ahly counterparts to declare a truce. "We are asking for an end to the bloodshed and to reconcile and unite for the sake of Egypt," the White Knights said. Ultras Ahlawy replied with a smiley. (See pictures of Tahrir Square.)

The violence in Port Said will mean the rival ultras will need one another more than ever. Following Wednesday's tragedy, Egypt's military ruler, Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi vowed to hunt down the perpetrators, portraying himself as protector of the victims. And Tantawi is likely to have public opinion on his side. Whether provoked or not, the ultras may have achieved the opposite of the goal that has united them over the past year: Rather than sweep away the remnants of the ancien regime, they may instead have helped consolidate the military's authority in an order deemed acceptable to a majority of Egyptians.

James M. Dorsey is senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Ultras play into the hands of the military by default or by design

By James M. Dorsey

Efforts by the Egyptian military and security forces to exploit Wednesday’s soccer violence in Port Said in which 74 people were killed in the worst violence in the country’s football history threaten to back fire with mounting indications that authorities should have been aware of plans to disrupt the match between the city’s Al Masri SC and crowned Cairo club Al Ahli SC.

A series of messages on Twitter in advance of the match between the two rivals, whose fans already clashed last June in Port Said, as well as analysis by soccer officials of video of Wednesday’s incident is sparking outrage among Egyptians who have not in the past supported the country’s militant, highly politicized, violence-prone soccer fans or ultras.

The security forces’ low level presence in the Port Stadium, part of an effort in the past year by the unpopular police forces, which are widely seen as the henchmen of ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, to avoid clashes with the ultras – founded by professionals and students who often were anarchists who modelled themselves on similar groups in Serbia and Italy -- and are credited for their role last year in Egypt’s anti-government revolt, was also designed to demonstrate that the police was needed to prevent a breakdown of law and order.

Many Egyptians are convinced that in the case of Port Said, the police’s attitude was backed by the country’s military rulers in a bid to further drive a wedge between the militant groups, the most radical opponents of continued military rule, and a protest-weary public that still has confidence in the military despite its brutal crackdown on protesters, is frustrated by the lack of tangible economic benefit from the revolt and wants a return to normalcy so that Egypt can resume economic growth.

Whether that strategy will work could be put to the test on Friday when it will become clear what kind of response the ultras are getting to their calls for a protest march on the interior minister. The sense that the police and the military failed to live up to their responsibilities in Port Said and that the violence was not spontaneous could work in the ultras favour.

“There was something planned. Our security knew about it. People were tweeting before the match. I saw a tweet with my own eyes 13 to 14 hours before the match in which a Masri fan was telling Ahli supporters: ‘If you are coming to the match, write your will before you come,” said Diaa Salah, a member of the women’s committee of the Egyptian Football Federation (EFA) whose board consists of Mubarak appointees, and a former manager of a soccer club.

“The government is getting back at the ultras. They are saying: ‘You protest against us, you want democracy and freedom. Here is a taste of your democracy and freedom,” Mr. Salah said.

Ultras of Al Ahli, a club founded more than a century ago as a center of anti-British, republican nationalism together with supporters of their arch Cairo rival Al Zamalek, the club created by British colonial administrators, their Egyptian allies and monarchists, set their deep-seated hatred of one another aside in the past year to join forces first against Mubarak and then against the military.

The ultras played a key role in breaking the barrier of fear that had prevented Egyptians from en masse protesting against the government and formed the outer defence line on Tahrir Square last year against the security forces and Mubarak loyalists. Ultras were since in the lead in the storming of the offices of Mubarak’s hated State Security Service shortly after his departure, repeated clashes with security forces in the stadiums, the storming of the Israeli embassy in September and finally the vicious battles in November and December in streets near Tahrir Square in which more than 50 people were killed and more than a 1,000 were wounded. Those battles were in demand of the immediate return of the military to its barracks.

The ultras’ fearlessness coupled with their record of years of hostility towards the police increasingly drew thousands of disaffected, less educated and often unemployed youth whose political thinking was less sharply defined and who bear a deep-seated grudge against the police for the violence and abuse they suffered in years of clashes in the stadiums. Ultras last April in the first African club championship in Cairo in which the public was freely admitted between Zamalek and Esperance Sportieve du Tunis stormed the pitch in the 90th minute destroying everything in their path. Leaders of the ultras admitted at the time that they were losing control to a charismatic young man with no education and no job.

In a clear indication that leaders of both the Ahly and Zamalek ultras were seeking to curb violence, Ultras White Knights (UWK), the Zamalek support group called in a statement several days before the match in Port Said and in advance of an Al Ahly-Zamalek match that had been scheduled for February 8 on their Al Ahly counterparts to agree on a truce. “We are asking for an end to the bloodshed and to reconcile and unite for the sake of Egypt,” the UWK said. Ultras Ahlawy replied with a smiley.

That call is now more relevant than ever. The ultras whether they walked into a trap or initiated the Port Said violence have no doubt again dug themselves into a hole. This time round it will be a lot tougher to dig themselves out. They have played into the hands of the military and the police in dealing a lethal blow contentious street politics as opposed to electoral politics and the horse trading associated with it. For those who believe that only continued protests will ensure Egypt’s transition to a democracy and prevent remnants of the ancien regime and established opposition forces such as the Muslim Brotherhood from filling the political vacuum and structuring the country’s future in a way that serves their interests rather than one that guarantees the emergence of a full-fledged democracy, Wednesday is a black day.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Ultra Violence - How Egypt’s soccer mobs are threatening the revolution

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Ultra Violence

How Egypt’s soccer mobs are threatening the revolution.

BY JAMES M. DORSEY | FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Wednesday's lethal soccer riots in the Suez Canal town of Port Said, which left more than 73 spectators and security personnel dead, marks a watershed moment in Egypt after the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak. This tragedy is not simply a story of a match gone horribly awry: It will have important and wide-ranging political ramifications, further isolate militant, highly politicized, violence-prone fan groups, single out the police for renewed criticism, and strengthen calls for the imposition of law and order.

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Initial reports said the violence erupted during a match between storied Cairo club Al Ahly, Egypt's most popular team, and Premier League team Al Masry, with only a minimal number of security forces in the stadium. While Wednesday's deadly incident constitutes the worst soccer-related violence in an Egyptian stadium in the country's history, it is not the first time that militant fan groups -- or "ultras," modeled on similar groups in Italy and Serbia -- have invaded the pitch. The incident is but one of a series of violent events involving soccer fans since Mubarak's fall.

As in April, when fans of Al Ahly's arch-rival Zamalek club invaded the pitch during the post-Mubarak era's first African Cup match against a Tunisian team, rumors were swirling in Egypt about the reasons for Wednesday's incident. Some Egyptians speculated that the security forces deliberately allowed the clashes to take place to prove that the police are needed to avoid a breakdown of law and order. Others suggested that Egypt's military rulers engineered the lack of a police presence in a bid to provoke the ultras and further undermine their credibility in a protest-weary country frustrated with the country's downward economic spiral.

Read further on Foreign Policy

Resignations deepen rift among Turkish Islamists and country’s soccer crisis

Fethullah Gulen

By James M. Dorsey

The Turkish Football Federation’s (TFF) three top managers have resigned in a move that appears to have deepened the rift between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkey’s powerful Islamic Gulen movement as well as the massive match-fixing crisis in Turkish soccer.

TFF chairman Mehmet Ali Ayindar and his vice chairmen Goksel Gumusdag and Lutfi Arıbogan gave no reason for their resignation days after the federation’s general assembly defeated a proposed rule change that would have prevented soccer teams found guilty of match-fixing from being relegated.

Mr. Gumusdag, an in-law of Mr. Erdogan and head of a club with two players implicated in the scandal, was among scores of soccer officials detained last year in the match-fixing scandal, but he was released after several  hours of questioning.

The rejection of the rule change constituted a defeat for Mr. Erdogan, who last month drove against President Abdullah Gul’s will a controversial bill through parliament that reduced penalties for match-fixing from a maximum 12 to three years and prepared the ground for the rejected TFF rule change.

Mr. Gul is believed to be close to Fethullah Gulen, a self-exiled, Pennsylvania-based cleric, whose movement, Turkey’s foremost Islamic alliance, operates schools, businesses, media, including major Turkish media, and NGOs across the globe, and is widely seen as having significant sway over Turkey’s police force. The Gulen movement has been instrumental in the rise of Turkey’s appeal across the Middle East, North Africa and in sub-Saharan Africa with its network often paving the way for Turkish diplomacy and business.

Mr. Erdogan increasingly, however, has come to see Mr. Gulen not only as an asset but also a liability. The cleric’s inroads into the judiciary and the police has meant that critics of his movement have more often than not found themselves behind bars on charges of involvement in the murky and controversial Ergenekon affair, involving Turkey’s Kemalist, ultra-nationalist deep state. The affair has led to massive military arrests and made Turkey one of the world’s foremost jailers of journalists. The arrests have sparked international criticism and portrayed Mr. Erdogan as increasingly arrogant and authoritarian.

Mr. Gulen left Turkey in 1998 ostensibly for health reasons but more likely to avoid standing trial for a recording in which he allegedly advocated an Islamic regime. “Our friends who have positions in legislative and administrative bodies should learn its details and be vigilant all the time so that they can transform it and be more fruitful on behalf of Islam ... However, they should wait until the conditions become more favourable ... they should not come out too early,” Mr. Gulen was reported to have said.

Mr. Gulen asserts that the quote was taken out of context. He was acquitted in 2006 after having been tried in absentia on charges of trying to overthrow the secular state. Mr. Gulen has opted to remain in rural Pennsylvania although he is free to return to Turkey.

Mr. Gul and his supporters view the investigation of the match-fixing scandal as part of a greater clean-up in Turkey. They argue that the match-fixing scandal involves huge sums of money and is closely linked to organized crime.

A majority of TFF members rejected the proposed rule change that would have replaced relegation with a minimum penalty of a 12-point deduction on the grounds that such a move could only be made once legal proceedings in Turkey’s worst match-fixing scandal had been completed. Jailed Fenerbahce president Aziz Yildirim and his storied club, who have been targeted by Gulen media, were among those opposed to the rule change despite the fact that the club is threatened with relegation under the current TFF rules.

“Fenerbahçe voted against this for reasons of pride. The club thinks it's innocent and that it will prevail in the court case…. It has no problem being demoted a division and said so from the day that (European soccer body) UEFA announced they won't be in the Champions League. ‘You've already found us guilty with this decision, then why are you waiting to demote us?’ they said,” according to an email from Turkish blogger TurkeyEmergency, a Turkish journalist who wishes to remain anonymous because of the arrest of journalists critical of Mr. Gulen.

Messrs Erdogan and Gulen’s soccer proxy battle erupted as Mr. Yildirim and 92 other soccer club officials, coaches and players are scheduled to go on trial on February 14 on match-fixing related charges that involve eight teams, including Europa League members Besiktas and Trabzonspor. The scandal is believed to have affected 19 matches, including last season’s Fenerbahce 4-3 victory over Sivasspor which saw the club clinch the league championship on the final day. The Champions League has since barred Fenerbahce from participating in its competition because of the match-fixing scandal.

The TFF said that executive board member Hüsnü Güreli would be acting chairman until the federation elects a new head on February 27.

Mr. Aydinlar said in a statement that he had resigned because he could not “stand the atmosphere where there is no trust, where many people and institutions act without ethics. The point we are at is in deep contrast with my views in life and ethics, so I’ve decided to leave in order to raise attention to the situation.”

TurkeyEmergency quoted Mr. Yildirim as saying in a letter that he had no issue with Mr. Erdogan and that “no one can get in between Erdogan and myself,” an apparent reference to Mr. Gulen. Turkey’s Fanatik quoted Mr. Yildirim on Wednesday as saying in an interview three times that “Fenerbahçe is Atatürk's team and it will stay that way.” Mr. Yildirim was seemingly accusing Mr. Gulen, widely seen as an opponent of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the visionary who carved modern Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire, of wanting to remove him to gain control of Fenerbahce.

The soccer battle between Messrs Erdogan and Gulen is the latest of a string of incidents souring  the once close relationship between the two men. Mr. Gulen has taken Mr. Erdogan to task for his tough stance towards Israel in the wake of the 2010 Mavi Maramara affair. Mr. Erdogan effectively froze relations with Israel after Israeli forces stormed the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish aid ship that was attempting to run the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, killing nine Turkish nationals.

The cleric has also criticized the prime minister for being too soft on Turkey’s staunchly secular armed forces despite the fact that Mr. Erdogan succeeded in bringing the military under civilian control and that hundreds of officers, including scores of serving generals, have on his watch been jailed for alleged coup-plotting. Mr. Gulen is believed to want Mr. Gul to succeed Mr. Erdogan in 2015 when Mr. Erdogan’s term as prime minister is up and he is expected to seek the presidency.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.