ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Fenerbahce accepted coach Ismail Kartal's resignation on Friday, Turkish media reports said, after failing to convince him to stay at the helm of the Istanbul side.
Kartal announced he was stepping down following Thursday's draw against Roma in a Champions League game. He did not explain why he was quitting just three months after taking up the position and refused to take questions.
Fenerbahce initially refused to accept his resignation following the 1-1 draw in Istanbul but failed to persuade him to stay, NTV television and other media reported. Assistant coach Dirk Kuyt would temporarily manage the team, the report said. There was no immediate official statement from Fenerbahce.
“First of all, I congratulate my players for carrying out the tasks I assigned for tonight’s match to the letter. We played football worthy of the Champions League," the state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Kartal as saying on Thursday. "We could have won the match; we had clear chances. The match ended in a draw, and I am proud of my players.”
Kartal continued: “Tonight, I am resigning from my position — never to return. I extend my heartfelt thanks to my players.”
In a separate news conference soon after, club chairman Aziz Yildirim said Fenerbahce fans had hurled a water bottle at Kartal, describing the incident as a reason for the coach’s decision. Kartal was also upset by a series of social media posts, Yildirim said.
Yildirim insisted that Kartal’s resignation was not accepted and that he would remain at the helm.
“You saw the state Ismail was in. Can a person endure that much distress?” Yildirim said. “They threw a water bottle at Ismail Kartal’s head. We saw it. That is why he is upset.”
“Ismail Kartal remains in his post,” Yildirim added. “I said (to Kartal): ‘You will continue,’ and that was that.”
Kartal nevertheless, failed to attend training ahead of a Superlig game against Gaziantep FK on Friday. Fenerbahce official Oguz Cetin later met with Kartal but failed to convince him to stay, NTV reported.
Meanwhile, authorities identified the fan who hurled the water bottle and barred him from attending games, Anadolu reported.
See AP’s full soccer coverage here
Fenerbahce's head coach Ismail Kartal gives instructions from the side line during the Champions League opening phase soccer match between Fenerbahce and Roma in Istanbul, Turkey, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a defeat for the Trump administration, a federal court on Friday ruled that the Energy Department exceeded its authority when it forced a Michigan coal-fired power plant to stay open past its scheduled retirement date last year.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright had said the 64-year-old J.H. Campbell Generating Plant was needed to ensure reliable electricity in the region, and he used emergency powers to keep it operating. Environmental groups and three states — Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota — went to court to try to overturn orders keeping the plant online.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the states and the groups, saying there was no real emergency under the law.
The section of the Federal Power Act that allows emergency orders “is essentially a narrow, last-resort backstop," Appeals Court Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. Use of emergency authority “is triggered only when there is a need for immediate, essentially last-resort action and the circumstances require action by DOE in particular, as opposed to action by the state or states responsible for resource adequacy," she added.
Reversing the Campbell plant's “long and carefully planned retirement" is "disruptive," Pillard wrote.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said she was relieved the appeals court “threw out DOE’s order that had zero basis in reality.”
Nessel, a Democrat, said her office “has been fighting this unlawful political stunt at every turn, and this ruling proves what we have been saying all along: this administration does not get to invent fake emergencies to bypass the rule of law against the best interests of Michigan residents.”
The Michigan case is one of several legal disputes that have emerged across the country as the Trump administration uses emergency powers to force a half-dozen coal-fired plants to remain open.
Administration officials were undeterred by Friday's court ruling and just hours later Wright announced another emergency order to keep online a coal plant in Centralia, Washington. That plant, operated by TransAlta, had been scheduled to shut down at the end of 2025.
The orders, which also apply to plants in Indiana, Colorado and Florida, are raising ratepayer bills and adding air and water pollution that could have been avoided, critics say. An oil and gas plant in Pennsylvania was also ordered to keep its turbines running as a hedge against electricity shortages in the mid-Atlantic grid.
President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency in a January 2025 executive order, citing demand increases from artificial intelligence and data center growth.
An Energy Department spokesperson said the emergency orders — including at Campbell — “prevented blackouts and likely saved hundreds of lives during peak capacity events this past year,” especially severe winter storms in late January and early February.
At the peak of the storms, coal generation in affected regions increased by 25% compared to the previous year, spokeswoman Emily Matthews said. The Campbell plant provided over 650 megawatts — enough power for hundreds of thousands of homes — every day from Jan. 21 to Feb. 1, she said.
The Energy Department "will continue to protect and defend energy security for all Americans,” she said.
Keeping the Michigan plant open beyond its May 2025 retirement has cost about $259 million so far, according to new financial filings. Those losses will likely be paid by families and businesses in the Midwest, opponents of the order say.
Consumers Energy, which operates the Campbell plant, said it was reviewing the court ruling. In the meantime, the utility will keep the plant operating under terms of a recent DOE order that extends its directive through mid-November, spokesman Brian Wheeler said in a statement.
Ted Kelly, U.S. clean energy director at the Environmental Defense Fund, said the court ruling rejected the Trump administration’s nationwide effort to force “unreliable, aging coal plants that are bleeding money and polluting communities to stay online.”
The Energy Department's “unlawful actions attempted to make families and businesses in the Midwest wastefully pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a coal plant that should have been shut down over a year ago,” Kelly said Friday. The Campbell plant and other aging sites are “incredibly expensive, dangerous to our health and break down frequently,” he said.
Sanjay Narayan, a lawyer for the Sierra Club, called the ruling a victory for families across the Midwest who are “paying to keep this old, expensive and dirty power plant online.”
The Trump administration “has been pulling out all the stops to try to bolster dirty and expensive fossil fuels at public expense. This reckless agenda will not succeed,” Narayan said. "We will continue to fight back against the other illegal extensions across the country.”
Associated Press writers Matt Brown in Billings, Montana, and Ed White in Detroit contributed to this story.
FILE - An aerial image of Consumer Energy's J.H. Campbell Generating Complex is seen in Ottawa County, Mich., Sept. 21, 2024. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP, File)
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaks after the signing of an oil agreement between the US and Venezuela at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Pedro Mattey)
