The right to earn bread money

I love the way that whenever they lose a case lawyers in Turkey say they will go all the way to the European Court of Human Rights to defend their clients. You get all sorts of weird cases ranging for someone whose had their licence to own a gun withdrawn to people who own gecekondus on state land complaining when the municipality comes in and knocks down their illegally built home.

That reminds me. Does anyone know if that woman is still there who had the gecekondu smack bang in the middle of the planned second runway at Antalya airport and was refusing to move?

Back to the point. Fenerbahce fullback Deniz Baris looks set to be the next case before the court where he will defend his right "to earn his bread money" as the millionaires who play footy in Turkey like to describe their outragous salaries.

Yesterday the Turkish Football Federation suspended his player licence because he hasn't paid back a debt of some 1 million euros (or avros as the Anatolia news agency stupidly calls them) to Genclerbirligi. I'm not sure exactly what the circumstances are, and reading the Turkish press doesn't really help, but I think he signed some sort of deal with Genclerbirligi and then promptly signed up with Fenerbahce. Silly boy.

In addition to going to the European Court of Human Rights, Baris' lawyer, Haluk Burcuoglu, says he will open cases against the current TFF board and the previous one. Rumours that Cherie Blair has been hired have been denied.

All fun and games so far but this certainly won't help Fenerbahce with just a handful of matches left in the season and the fight still well and truely on for the League championship. Oh well, at least Gulay will be happy.

The other point though is how the hell did Baris manage to play most of the season for Fenerbahce with this hanging over his head. He did have to sit out a few matches earlier in the season, yesterday's decision was some sort of TFF appeals court thing which confirmed an original decision that he should be suspended (although that decision was somehow suspended also). You may think that the federation would have wanted to get this whole thing over nice and quick, but no, they decided to wait until crunch time in the league before suspending the bloke.

Well, no-one has ever accused the TFF of good scheduling.