The Turkish football federation (TFF) has been ordered to pay compensation to a referee after it revoked his licence on the grounds he was gay, according to reports.



An Istanbul court on Tuesday instructed the TFF to pay 23,000 Turkish lira (£5,330) to compensate for its treatment of Halil İbrahim Dinçdağ, the Dogan news agency reported.

The sum was lower than the 110,000 lira (£25,500) demanded by Dinçdağ’s lawyers in a case that had become a symbol of discrimination against gay people in Turkey’s largely conservative society.

The TFF had said that since he was exempt from military service due to his homosexuality, Dinçdağ fell into the army’s classification of unfit and was unable to do the job of refereeing.

Dinçdağ had been a referee in the Trabzon region of north-eastern Turkey but had his licence revoked in 2009 after publicly coming out as gay.