Earlier this month, Turkey’s highest court upheld the jail sentence of Aziz Yildirim, president of Fenerbahce, one of Turkey’s two top sports clubs, and a pronounced critic of the Fethullah Gulen movement. Yildirim will soon return to prison to serve a 26-month sentence.

In the wake of the court ruling, Yildirim argued that the match-fixing case in which he was convicted was a political trial with a political conclusion. He claims he was convicted by Gulenist-controlled police and special courts because of his anti-Gulen views.

Here are highlights from Yildirim’s recent statements:

“Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in his statement on Dec. 17, said that a parallel state exists. This parallel state is run by Gulen and his community. All those prosecutors, judges and policemen were removed from office because they are Gulenists. … So, it means that all those operations in the past, including the one against us, were the work of the Gulen community. I cannot be sure now whether the Appeals Court judges [who upheld my sentence] are in the service of the parallel state or the Republic of Turkey. The justice minister should make a statement to shed light on the situation.