Turkey bans spectators from matches for the rest of the year

The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) has on Thursday revoked its decision to allow spectators in football stadiums from October and decrees that the matches will be without an audience during the first half of the 2020-2021 season.

“The decision has been made that the competitions of the first period of the 2020-2021 season will be played without spectators,” he says. the sports body in a statement made public on its website.

The TFF thus revokes the decision taken on August 25 to start the season, which starts on Friday, September 11, without an audience, but to allow 30% capacity from October.

The Federation stresses that has made this decision after assessing the situation of the pandemic in Turkey and in the world, described by the Turkish Minister of Health, Fahrettin Koca, who already warned on Wednesday of a general worsening of the contagion and death data.

“We are in the second peak of the first wave,” the minister summarized the situation after offering the latest data on more than 1,500 daily infections and 45 deaths.

Even if the figure is still far from the 120 daily deaths recorded during the peak of the pandemic last April, it triples the usual daily deaths between June and the second week of August.

The use of the mask is mandatory on public roads, in transport, shops and offices in most of Turkey and it is asked to maintain social distance, but in other aspects, life has largely returned to normal.