--- title: "Kurdish Club Amedspor Can Go Top of Turkey’s Super Lig With Win at Galatasaray" description: "The Diyarbakir club, once raided by antiterrorism police, sits two points behind the champions in its first top-flight season." author: "rews desk" published: 2026-11-06T11:59:40Z modified: 2026-11-06T16:45:01Z url: https://rews.cc/a/kurdish-club-amedspor-can-go-top-of-turkey-s-super-lig-with--6c8824 language: en tags: ["politics", "soccer", "kurdish", "turkey", "peace", "europe"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Kurdish Club Amedspor Can Go Top of Turkey’s Super Lig With Win at Galatasaray *The Diyarbakir club, once raided by antiterrorism police, sits two points behind the champions in its first top-flight season.* By rews desk · November 6, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/kurdish-club-amedspor-can-go-top-of-turkey-s-super-lig-with--6c8824 ## In brief - Amedspor, from Kurdish-majority Diyarbakir, plays at Galatasaray on Saturday with a chance to top the Super Lig - The club has 23 points from 10 games, two behind Galatasaray, and has won all six home games - A decade ago the club faced police raids, fines and fan bans during fighting in southeast Turkey - The PKK said in May 2025 it was disbanding, and Erdogan congratulated Amedspor on its promotion - Kurdish Studies Center research says the club’s support among Kurdish adults quadrupled to four million Amedspor, the Diyarbakir football club whose offices antiterrorism police raided a decade ago, plays at Galatasaray on Saturday knowing that a win would put it top of Turkey’s Super Lig in its first season there. The club has 23 points from 10 games, with seven wins, two draws and one loss, two points behind the reigning champions, [according to beIN Sports](https://www.beinsports.com/en-us/soccer/sper-lig/articles/galatasaray-vs-amedspor-a-battle-for-the-top-of-the-s%C3%BCper-lig-2026-11-03). Kickoff at Rams Park in Istanbul is 7 p.m. local time. Amedspor has won all six of its home games in front of sellout crowds of more than 30,000, and Gift Orban, a 24-year-old Nigerian striker, has nine goals, the same total [FotMob lists](https://www.fotmob.com/matches/galatasaray-vs-amed-sportif/2jej7ru) for Galatasaray’s Victor Osimhen in two fewer games. “Amedspor have achieved a level of success that nobody expected,” Vahap Coskun, an academic from Diyarbakir who has written a book about the club, [told Al Jazeera’s Patrick Keddie](https://aljazeera.com/sports/2026/11/6/we-are-here-kurdish-club-amedspor-shakes-up-turkish-football). He credited the coach, Besnik Hasi, and a mostly new squad playing above itself. He also pointed to the “softening political climate,” which he said “affects everything from the treatment Amedspor receive in away matches to the refereeing, and it allows Amedspor to compete in fairer conditions.” ![A soccer player in a red shirt and green shorts runs toward a ball on a grassy field, with dark clouds behind him.](https://rews.cc/img/b5130ec5871dfcbcdf36e64f5c38b7b801b9faee.webp) Diyarbakir is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. When fighting between the military and groups linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, wrecked parts of it about 10 years ago, Amedspor was in the third tier and had become a banner for Kurdish identity. It was fined, and away fans and outspoken players were banned. Rival supporters attacked its fans, players and officials. The club was founded in 1972 as Melikahmet Turanspor and taken over by the municipality in 1990. It reached the third tier for the first time in 2013, and a year later renamed itself after Amed, the Kurdish word for Diyarbakir, and took on the red, green and yellow of the Kurdish flag. Authorities allowed the name and the green and red, though not the full tricolor. It beat Galatasaray 2-0 in Istanbul in a Turkish Cup game in January 2015. The next season, with the southeast at war, it knocked out the Super Lig sides Basaksehir and Bursaspor on the way to the cup quarterfinals. Later, after government appointees to the municipality cut its funding, local businesses kept it afloat. ![Six hands pull red and green fabric around a giant stitched soccer ball above market shops, with a hilltop fortress and minaret in the background.](https://rews.cc/img/ee1ae3a39076518a13ea6ca6910a96deaff20cf7.webp) The politics shifted. A peace process between the state and the PKK began in late 2024, and the group [said in May 2025](https://www.turkishminute.com/2025/05/12/kurdish-militant-pkk-says-disbanding-ending-its-decades-long-armed-struggle/) that it was disbanding and ending its armed struggle. Its jailed founder, Abdullah Ocalan, was [moved to a new section of his island prison](https://rews.cc/a/turkey-moves-jailed-pkk-founder-ocalan-to-new-section-of-isl-997751) this week. When Amedspor won promotion in May, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ultranationalist ally Devlet Bahceli congratulated the club, and Erdogan later hosted its players and officials at the presidential palace with those of the other promoted teams. “Especially when we talk about the football federation and referees, \[Amedspor\] were always treated very badly in previous years. Their penalties were not given, their red cards were not fair,” said Bagis Erten, a sports journalist with the newspaper Oksijen. “But now this system at least is not stopping them.” At Diyarbakir Stadium one stand shouts in Kurdish, “Ki ne em?” (Who are we?), and another answers, “Kurd in em!” (We are Kurds!). A tifo at the recent 3-2 win over Besiktas read “EM HATIN” (We are here). ![Fans in red and green fill opposite stadium stands, raising scarves as flowing colored ribbons cross above a soccer field.](https://rews.cc/img/474cb04312e32f9cde9e6ec8b5a0879eaf886702.webp) Some rival fans this season have held up yellow body bags and pictures of F-16s, references to the worst years of the conflict. Reha Ruhavioglu, director of the Kurdish Studies Center and a former member of the club’s advisory board, called Amedspor’s matches a “weekly barometer” of whether Turkey can accept the club “with its own colours, culture, language and identity.” Several teams and their fans have visited Diyarbakir without trouble, he said. “When you see the bigger picture, it is going well.” His center’s research, published in March, found that Amedspor’s support among Kurdish adults in Turkey had quadrupled to four million over four years, making it the most popular club among Kurds. Sixty-one percent of the Kurds surveyed said they support Turkey’s national team. “Amedspor’s stands are really not homogenous,” Ruhavioglu said, noting that many fans back the pro-Kurdish DEM Party but that others do not, and that “many fans are praying in the stadium” though the Kurdish political movement is largely secular. The starting lineup is now mostly foreigners and some non-Kurdish Turks. Coskun said that didn’t matter much. “It is the club that carries the identity, not the players,” he said. “Of course, fans would like to see many more Kurdish players in the team, but what matters most here is success.” Erten said the club might tone down its politics to win games or avoid trouble, and that the new tolerance rests on Ankara. “It’s progress, but it depends only on the approach of government,” he said. “It’s very fragile progress.”