Turkish People: Israeli footballers unwelcome

Around a thousand people rally outside a soccer stadium in the northwestern Turkish city of Istanbul, where the Israeli squad Maccabi Tel Aviv was playing the Turkish club Besiktas.

Demonstrating on Thursday, the protesters carried large banners depicting lots of Turkish activists, who were killed by Zionist Occupation Israel on their way to the Gaza Strip last year, the Associated Press reported.

The government deployed police forces in large numbers around the arena, preventing the protesters from reaching the Israelis, who had accompanied the Israeli team to Istanbul.

“We don’t want to see Zionist [regime of Israel’s] footballers in our country,” a protester told Press TV. ”Therefore we are staging this protest.”

Zionist Occupation Israel Israeli commandos attacked a Turkish-backed aid flotilla, which was carrying humanitarian aid to the Tel Aviv-blockaded Gaza, in international waters on May 31, 2010, killing the Turkish human rights campaigners and injuring around 50 others.

Another demonstrator said, “We see Maccabi Tel Aviv a representative of Israel that is responsible of massacres in Gaza and at the Mavi Marmara” — the lead vessel of the fleet.