The ACP Defends Atalik Against the TCF
Turkish Chess Federation (TCF) President (and FIDE VP) Ali Nihat Yazaci has been involved in various controversies having to do with various federations filing lawsuits against FIDE; those have been mentioned and discussed on this blog already. There's also some dubious politicking internal to the TCF affecting its strongest native-born son, Suat Atalik.
In brief, the TCF "requested" (read: demanded) that all its members sign a form, according to which they would have to ask permission to play abroad and agree not to commit any action "against [the] Turkish Republic". Atalik didn't sign and was given a 15-month ban by the TCF. That's isn't a good thing, but one can acknowledge the TCF's freedom to make its own dumb rules. (They have no corner on that market, sad to say.) But then Atalik went to play in a Greek tournament, only to find the organizers preventing him from playing, on orders from the Greek Chess Federation. More specifically, the order came from Greek Federation President Georgios Makropoulos and General Secretary Panagiotis Nikolopoulos. (In what is so totally obviously a complete and utter coincidence, Makropoulos is FIDE's Deputy President, part of the leadership cohort with Yazaci. Nothing to see here, folks, keep moving.) (More about this story here.)
The latest news is that the Association of Chess Professionals (ACP) has written a defense of GM Atalik, which acknowledges the legal (but not moral) justification of the TCF's ban of Atalik in Turkish events, but which rejects the justification of their attempts to extend this ban internationally so long as it is only the TCF and not FIDE that has a problem with him.
One wishes the ACP well, and hope that the result is that Atalik is free to play outside the country whenever he wishes, without any further impediment. The worst result would be that FIDE acts as a TCF puppet and offers their own ban. Time will tell.