Turkish prosecutors are seeking up to five years in prison for former Turkish Football Federation vice president Lütfi Arıboğan on charges of aiding the faith-based Gülen movement in a case related to a match-fixing investigation that shook Turkish football in 2011, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Thursday.
The indictment accuses Arıboğan of knowingly and willingly assisting the movement without being a member of the organization. Prosecutors requested a sentence of between two and five years.
But the indictment also acknowledges that investigators found no concrete evidence of an organizational tie between Arıboğan and the movement, according to Anadolu.
The Gülen movement is a faith-based network inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, known for its schools, charities and interfaith dialogue initiatives. Once allied with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, it became a government target after corruption investigations in 2013 implicated Erdoğan’s inner circle.
Ankara accuses its followers of using positions in the police and judiciary to pursue fabricated cases against perceived opponents, including Fenerbahçe, one of Turkey’s biggest football clubs, and later blamed the movement for a failed coup in 2016. The movement denies involvement in the coup or any terrorist activity.
Prosecutors allege that Arıboğan used his position at the federation to help people linked to the movement undermine Fenerbahçe, contending that he shared investigation documents with a journalist and handled football disciplinary proceedings and contacts with UEFA, European football’s governing body, in ways that served the movement’s interests.
The indictment was submitted to the İstanbul 25th High Criminal Court for review. Prosecutors dropped the investigation into three other suspects.
The case dates back to July 2011, when police detained dozens of football officials and players over suspected match-fixing during the previous season. Among them was then and current Fenerbahçe president Aziz Yıldırım, who denied wrongdoing.
Fenerbahçe was excluded from the 2011-12 Champions League, Europe’s leading club competition. Yıldırım spent nearly a year in detention and was sentenced in 2012 to more than six years in prison on match-fixing and criminal organization charges.
Arıboğan was the federation’s senior vice president and an executive committee member in 2011 and 2012. According to the new indictment he oversaw its sporting investigation into the allegations.
Prosecutors cite 101 telephone contact records between Arıboğan and Mehmet Baransu, a journalist at the now-closed Taraf newspaper and who has been imprisoned since March 2015 on charges stemming from his reporting, between July 2011 and December 2012.
They also allege that Arıboğan forwarded Baransu an email containing a police document and a list of names related to the investigation.
The indictment argues that the information helped generate coverage against Fenerbahçe that was subsequently used in disciplinary proceedings by the federation and UEFA.
It lists the club as an injured party and alleges that its exclusion from the Champions League caused substantial financial loss.
Yıldırım and other defendants were acquitted in a retrial in 2015. Turkish prosecutors then pursued a separate case alleging that police officers, judicial officials and media figures linked to the movement had fabricated the match-fixing investigation to remove Fenerbahçe’s leadership.
That investigation was underway before the July 2016 coup attempt, which Erdoğan accused Gülen of orchestrating.
The government designated the movement a terrorist organization in May 2016 and significantly expanded its crackdown after the attempted coup. Gülen, who died in the United States in 2024, denied involvement, and the movement also denies allegations of terrorism.
After an appeals court overturned the 2015 acquittals, Yıldırım and other defendants were acquitted again in November 2020.
Arıboğan and the three other suspects were detained for questioning in December 2025. Arıboğan was released under judicial supervision, including a ban on leaving Turkey.
Arıboğan’s prosecution is among the cases Turkey continues to pursue over alleged assistance to the Gülen movement, a decade after the failed coup. The crackdown has extended beyond those accused of involvement in the coup to journalists, teachers, businesspeople and former civil servants.
Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said in July that more than 720,000 people had faced legal proceedings over alleged links to the movement since 2016 and that in excess of 127,000 had been convicted. Investigations or trials involving another 83,404 people were still underway.
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