Arrest warrant issued for ‘sexist’ former Trabzonspor chairman

The arrest warrant was issued for Hacıosmanoğlu on the grounds that he did not attend court hearings in which he was being tried for “insulting women” after a match last year.

Trabzonspor officials had taken referee Çağatay Şahan and his three assistants hostage for four hours over what they considered an “erroneous decision” during a football match against Gaziantepspor on Oct. 28, 2015, which ended in a 2-2 draw. They ended up releasing the four match officials after a call from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.  

“If we’re going to die, we’ll die like men. We won’t live like women. No one has the power to make us live like women,” Hacıosmanoğlu said after the incident. 

He later apologized for the remarks, saying he did want to offend women and, uniquely, that “my mother is a woman.”  

The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) suspended Hacısomanoğlu for 40 weeks – the typical length of a woman’s pregnancy – and fined him 150,000 Turkish Liras.  

A lawsuit was also filed against Hacıosmanoğlu and he now faces up to one year and six months in prison.

Hacıosmanoğlu failed to get himself reelected as Trabzonspor club chairman last December, handing over his post to new chair Muharrem Usta.