A Turkish lawyer is taking legal action against Inter Milan, the Italian football team, for wearing a strip with “Crusader-style” red crosses that he alleges is ”offensive to Muslim sensibilities”.
Baris Kaska, a lawyer in Izmir who specialises in European law, said that he had lodged a complaint in a local court against Inter Milan, which last month played the Istanbul team Fenerbahce in a Champions League match at the San Siro stadium in Milan. The Inter players wore a new strip - a white shirt with a giant red cross on it - marking the club's centenary.
Mr Kaska said he was not only seeking damages but was also appealing to Uefa to annul the match, which Inter won 3-0. “That cross only brings one thing to mind - the symbol of the Templar Knights,” he said. “It made me think immediately of the bloody days of the past. While I was watching the game I felt profound grief in my soul.” Mr Kaska told the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia that the cross symbolised “Western racist superiority over Islam”.
He said that Inter had “manifested in the most explicit manner the superiority of one religion over another”. He said the court had contacted both Uefa and Fifa to convey his demand that Inter should be “heavily fined for displaying an offensive symbol”. “How could Uefa allow this?“demanded the Turkish paper Radikal.
Inter Milan officials said that they were “astounded”. They said that in the first match between the two teams in September at Istanbul - which Fenerbahce won 1-0 - Inter had deliberately refrained from wearing the strip with the red cross but had felt entitled to use it on its home ground.
Inter officials also pointed out that a red cross on a white background is the symbol of the city of Milan. Many Italian football clubs incorporated the cross on their shirts, including Inter, founded in Milan in 1908. “The red cross has become an international political football,” Corriere della Sera commented...
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