Recontextualization of the arguments of ‘innocence’ by a football club on Turkish newsprint media

Abstract We explore the media representation of the involvement of Fenerbahçe, a football club in Türkiye, in the 2011 Turkish Sports Corruption Scandal. Specifically, the study focuses on the discursive construction of Fenerbahçe’s ‘innocence’ and ‘corruption’ through the central arguments of Fenerbahçe’s self-defense and how the newsprint media represents these arguments of innocence in Türkiye. The data consist of the council board speech of the club’s president after his release, the front-page headlines, and the news reports of Turkish daily newspapers featuring the speech. In the study, adopting the critical discourse analysis framework, we discuss that the newspapers either recontextualize the innocence arguments or set them aside to pursue their ideological stances. Besides, our analysis reveals that the newspapers ultimately ignore Fenerbahçe’s arguments about the existence of a secret criminal organization endeavoring to gain control of Fenerbahçe via match-fixing claims and the state via a civil coup.