The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) continues to fight its biggest ever integrity crisis after the arrest of 32 more suspects linked to a massive match-fixing scandal gripping the sport.
Orders were administered by Istanbul’s Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office to make new arrests, which include senior club executives throughout the country’s football pyramid.
One suspect remains at large
Authorities say an individual remains at large in the case, with digital forensic work taking place to find linked betting accounts and financial transactions.
According to Türkiye’s Law No. 6222 on the Prevention of Violence and Disorder in Sports, an individual betting on any sport they can influence is considered a crime.
The prosecutor’s office stated that the suspects were found to have placed bets on games involving their own teams, including bets on opposing teams during official matches. Police conducted coordinated operations across 10 provinces to detain individuals. The prosecutor’s office did not disclose the identities of the suspects or the clubs with which they were affiliated.
Given the scope of this investigation and the illicit activity that appears to have infiltrated all levels of the game in Türkiye, it appears more arrests are likely.
Scandal continues to mushroom
News broke of the Turkish betting scandal in November last year. More than 1,000 officials, players, and club workers were implicated after internal audits by the TFF laid bare the scale of the crisis engulfing the national game.
The review examined 571 active professional referees as part of an integrity sweep designed to identify potential breaches of betting regulations. The findings were stark. Investigators determined that 371 referees held registered betting accounts, while 152 had actively placed wagers on football matches, spanning both domestic competitions and international fixtures.
Several high-profile officials overseeing top-flight matches were among those implicated, deepening concerns about the credibility of results across the pyramid.
Within days of the audit’s conclusions, the federation moved to suspend 149 referees and assistant referees for periods of up to a year. It also pledged to tighten monitoring systems, strengthen ethics oversight and introduce stricter compliance checks, signalling that the scandal was not confined to isolated cases but pointed to systemic vulnerabilities.
The fallout quickly extended beyond match officials. More than 1,000 players across the top-tier Süper Lig and lower divisions had been referred to the Professional Football Discipline Board, underscoring how deeply the betting investigation had penetrated every level of professional football in Türkiye.
Despite case, study says global match-fixing on the decline
An authority monitoring global match-fixing says it monitored more than 1,000,000 events across 70 sports worldwide in 2025, flagging 1,116 matches as suspicious, which represents a 1% drop from 2024.
The figures, from Sportradar, suggest that the vast majority of competitions showed no signs of manipulation. North and Central America moved against the global trend, rising to 84 flagged matches. While still a small portion of the worldwide total, the increase stands out in a region where legal betting markets continue to expand.
A “suspicious match” is not proof of wrongdoing but an alert designed to trigger further review and information-sharing with sports bodies and law enforcement. Even so, the upward direction matters. In North America, concerns have often centred on niche or lower-liquidity markets, where a single piece of insider information can shift prices quickly.
Football generated the most alerts (618), followed by basketball (233), with increases also recorded in tennis, table tennis and cricket. Sportradar reported a 56% rise in AI-led detections, while International Betting Integrity Association said its 2025 alerts climbed 29% to 300 cases.
Illegal gambling in Türkiye remains prevalent
Academic research suggests the backdrop to the current scandal represents a persistent illegal betting issue in Türkiye.
A qualitative study published in the Turkish academic journal DergiPark, based on interviews with law enforcement experts, found that illegal sports betting operations rely on complex financial channels and intermediary networks, making enforcement increasingly difficult. The study also pointed to links between unlawful betting activity and organised criminal structures.
Separate nationwide research published in the journal Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology surveyed more than 5,000 people across 12 provinces and found that participation in gambling, including unlicensed platforms, remains significant despite tight regulation. Researchers said some bettors were drawn to illegal sites because they offer higher odds, a bigger selection of live markets and fewer identity checks than licensed operators.
Together, the studies suggest the match-fixing investigation is unfolding against a well-established illegal gambling ecosystem, one that authorities now allege has intersected directly with the country’s professional football pyramid.
