Istanbul -- The fledgling homosexual movement in Turkey has ventured into the roughest of fields -- the macho world of football -- after a referee "came out" on television, dropping a bombshell in this football-mad country and leaving authorities confused.

Already stripped of his refereeing licence, Halil Ibrahim Dincdag, 33, vows to fight on to restore his career and, if need be, go as far as the European Court of Human Rights.

"I have not committed a crime, I have not defamed my profession. I'm only a homosexual," he told AFP from Istanbul, where he was on "self-exile" after leaving his home in Trabzon, a conservative bastion on the Black Sea coast.

Dincdag's "coming out" last month was an act of unprecedented courage in a country where gays are widely ostracised and derisive words such as "fag" are among the favourite booing chants against referees at the stadiums.

"Since then, my life has turned into hell," he said, explaining that he lost not only his licence but was also "thanked" for his services by a radio station in Trabzon, where he used to do a programme.

"I have inadvertently become a standard-bearer of the homosexual struggle" in Turkey, he said timidly, adding he still had the support of his family, which includes an imam brother.

The Turkish Football Federation dug around to find an argument to revoke Dincdag's licence: since he was exempt from military service due to his homosexuality, thus falling into the army's classification of "unfit", the federation said he would be physically unfit for a refereeing job as well.

Scrambling to defend the move, federation vice president Lutfi Aribogan argued that Dincdag was a mediocre referee lacking "talent" and would have never made it anyway from the amateur to the professional league.

But as criticism of the decision mounted, the head of the referees' board said the door remained open for Dincdag to return to the fold even though he did not explain how.

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