The Turkish Football Federation has been having a lot of trouble lately with violence at matches, and the most successful strategy they’ve found so far to combat it is to ban adult men from the matches of any team that has been reprimanded for the unruliness of its fans. No really, according to the National Turk, women’s attendance at soccer matches is generally very low, but over 45,000 women attended as the Fenerbahce and Manisaspor teams went head to head, in the first match played under the new rule.
Turkey itself doesn’t have the greatest of records concerning women: there’s a 16% gap in literacy rates between Turkish men and women, and issues of women’s rights have been cited as one of the barriers between Turkey and admission to the European Union.  The TFF is now considering offering some free tickets to women and children for every match of their season, in order to further reduce the occurrence of football hooliganism.
Check out another video of the game’s spectators at our sibling site, SportsGrid.
