Mohamed Salah’s move to Trabzonspor this summer turned the Turkish club into one of the most-watched teams outside Europe’s traditional giants, driving shirt sales from roughly 46,000 to 116,000 in September alone. Now his new club is tangled up in one of the biggest corruption stories in Turkish football in years, though not in the way that headline might suggest.
Mohamed Salah’s Club President Among 448 Officials Suspended
The Turkish Football Federation provisionally suspended 448 current and former club officials on Wednesday as part of a sweeping betting investigation, referring all of them to its disciplinary committee. Among the names: Trabzonspor president Ertuğrul Doğan, the same man photographed shaking Salah’s hand at his unveiling in August, and Beşiktaş vice-president Hakan Daltaban. The list also includes several current and former Galatasaray officials and three former Fenerbahçe officials, touching all four of Turkey’s biggest clubs. The TFF said the 448, who served at Süper Lig and TFF 1. Lig clubs during the 2026-27 season, had placed bets while holding their positions at some point over the past five years.
To be clear, this is about club executives, not the club itself or its players. Doğan has acknowledged having a betting account and says he disclosed it to authorities, pushing back on the suggestion of wrongdoing. “These companies sponsored clubs and held launch events. Nobody thought this would cause problems,” he told broadcaster A Spor. “If we made a mistake, we apologize, but we have done nothing wrong.” Salah has no connection to the investigation, and nothing here implicates him or Trabzonspor’s playing squad.
A Second, Separate Scandal Involving Turkey’s Referee Chief
Two days before the 448-official list dropped, Turkish authorities arrested Ferhat Gündoğdu, head of the federation’s Central Referee Committee, along with six others, over allegations of interference in referee classifications, match assignments, scoring and appointments. Turkey’s justice minister has not said whether that case is connected to the betting investigation, and the TFF hasn’t officially linked the two, but the timing has put Turkish football’s integrity under a brighter spotlight than it’s seen in years.
This Isn’t Turkish Football’s First Betting Crisis
Turkey has been dealing with this exact problem since late 2025, when a league-wide audit found that 371 of 571 active professional referees held betting accounts, including one who had placed more than 18,000 bets. That fallout led to 149 referees and 1,024 players being suspended over the following year, with several players and club officials later jailed in a broader match-fixing crackdown. Wednesday’s 448-name list is the newest and largest round in that same ongoing cleanup effort, not an isolated incident.
What This Means for Salah and Trabzonspor
For now, Salah’s season continues uninterrupted. He’s scored seven goals in the league, including a hat-trick against Galatasaray, and remains the face of Trabzonspor’s biggest commercial moment in years. But the club he chose as his next chapter is now operating under a disciplinary cloud at the executive level, with its president facing a federation hearing over his own conduct. How that process unfolds, and whether it affects Trabzonspor’s standing beyond Doğan personally, is worth watching as the Turkish football season continues.
Mohamed Salah’s Club President Caught in Turkey’s Betting Scandal