A footballer for a Turkish top flight side said Thursday he has fled Turkey for Germany after a violent attack in Ankara where he was threatened over his Kurdish origins and support for Kurds in Kobane. Deniz Naki, who played for the Ankara-based Turkish Super Lig side Genclerbirligi, said he was attacked by unknown individuals who left him with injuries to the face and hand.
Naki, who was born in Germany, said the men insulted his mixed Kurdish and Alevi origins and also threatened him over his vocal support for Kurds resisting Islamic State (IS) jihadists in the battle for the Syrian town of Kobane. "My family is very worried about the incident and so as not to cause them any more worry, I have left Turkey to go to Germany," he wrote in a Turkish statement on his official Facebook page. "My being here (in Turkey) no longer had any meaning," he said. Naki, who adheres to the Alevi offshoot of Shia which is majority Sunni Turkey's biggest religious minority, had in recent weeks written several tweets hostile to IS.