Nothing on this scale had been attempted before: ten months earlier five elite performers in their prime years agreed to switch countries in the same week.

How the move began

World Athletics confirmed in June 2025 that it had received four applications for transfer of allegiance, all of them from Jamaica to Turkey, and said it would review them over the following months before deciding. In an exclusive interview with TVJ’s Kayon Raynor, Onder Ozbilen, a consultant with Turkey’s Sports Ministry, confirmed that his federation was in contact with the athletes.

The athletes needed Turkish citizenship and residency before the end of that month so that World Athletics’ three-year waiting period would expire in time for the Los Angeles Games of 2028.

What the athletes were offered was never documented. Unconfirmed reports put the packages at up to US$1.5 million, and included monthly stipends and performance incentives, and the terms were reported as a $500,000 signing bonus each for five athletes, plus a monthly allowance.

Bonuses of close to US$1 million for medals at global championships were also reported. The contracts were reported to run eight years, tying the athletes to Türkiye through the 2032 cycle.

The athletes did not compete at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo while their applications were pending.

Who else was affected

The panel refused the applications of 11 athletes, six from Africa, in a single decision, and the list included five Paris 2024 Olympic medallists. Its remit, World Athletics says, is “determining applications relating to athlete eligibility and transfers of allegiance, in accordance with these regulations”.

Alongside the Jamaican quartet were Kenyans Catherine Relin Amanang’ole, Brigid Kosgei, Brian Kibor, Ronald Kwemoi and Nelvin Jepkemboi, Nigeria’s Favour Ofili and Russia’s Sophia Yakushina.

Ofili’s career had been held back twice by administrative failures in Nigerian athletics: she missed the Tokyo 2020 Games, and at Paris 2024 officials left her out of the women’s 100m entirely, despite her qualification, that time through a registration error. The 24-year-old had secured Turkish citizenship by May 2025.

Why Turkey was recruiting

Turkey finished 64th at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where its 101 athletes won no gold medals, its worst result at an Olympiad, and then launched a wide recruitment campaign.

The 2025 recruitment fitted a longer pattern. Turkey had signed foreign-born athletes before, and its team at the 2016 European Championships included seven Kenyans and two Jamaicans.

Jamaica had been on this side of the transaction before. Sprint legend Merlene Ottey went on to represent Slovenia. Jacques Harvey took Turkish nationality in 2015 to compete as Jak Ali Harvey, and a sprinter named Barnes followed a year later. In 2025 the pace was different: Ozbilen said Stona and Campbell had already joined an urgent recruitment drive.

What the rules say

Section 4.4.2 of the eligibility regulations is the rule the four ran into. It sets a waiting period of three years, counted from the day the application reaches World Athletics. Through those three years the athlete must not represent another member in national representative competition. By the end of them the athlete must be 20 or older.

World Athletics rewrote these rules in December 2018. It set the floor at 20. It allowed one switch per career and never a second. It also told receiving countries to show evidence of full citizenship and associated rights. Coe gave the reason: “We reviewed the rules governing Transfer of Allegiance for the specific purpose of protecting our athletes from any abuses that occurred under the previous system.”

World Athletics does not treat a passport as enough. It applies further tests, it said in April 2026, to establish “a genuine connection between the athlete and the country they represent”.

The home federation can shorten the wait. Where it files no formal objection, three years fall to one.

Coe hardened the language in 2019, when the rules were tightened once more. Some transfers of young athletes, he said then, were akin to human trafficking.

The panel’s reasoning

Gazette NGR named the three people who took the decision — Donna Raynor, Cydonie Motherskill and, with them, Susanne van Waert — and the defining feature of their approach was that the 11 cases were not weighed one by one.

Al Jazeera published the core of the finding: “The panel found that the applications formed part of a coordinated recruitment strategy led by the Turkiye government acting through a wholly-owned and financed government club, to attract overseas athletes through lucrative contracts.”

The statement continued, in the text carried by Arab News: “Given the common features across the applications, the panel assessed them together and determined that such an approach is inconsistent with the core principles of the regulations.” The conclusion followed: “As a result of the decisions, the athletes are not eligible to represent Turkiye in national representative competitions or other relevant international events.”

Jamaica’s response

The Gleaner reported that the JAAA accepted the decision and said all four athletes still had a place in the national ranks. “We hold no grudges, our doors are wide open,” Gayle told the Jamaica Observer. “We are all Jamaicans and once they are in good standing.” The association has never petitioned World Athletics to block a transfer by one of its athletes.

The Gleaner reported that sports minister Olivia Grange urged empathy rather than criticism, and is leading consultations on athlete support and retention at the request of Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

Sociologist Orville Taylor called the comparison with mercenary labour migration flawed, since switching sporting allegiance does not necessarily mean abandoning citizenship, unlike the labour migration that is governed by the International Labour Organization. “You are moving for financial gain, yes, but you are not abdicating your relationship with your country,” he told The Gleaner.

His agent Paul Doyle told the Jamaica Observer that the athlete was devastated and that an appeal was being prepared: “Athletes in the past have been approved, and now all of a sudden, these ones aren’t.”

The legal argument

The Gleaner reported that Sayeed Bernard, an attorney who has represented athletes at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, questioned the decision to assess all the cases collectively rather than individually.

Bernard called it a bold interpretation of the regulations rather than a routine application of them. “They (WA) basically said state-orchestrated, financially induced, and a mass-athlete recruitment will not be recognised as a valid reason for transfer of allegiance,” he said. “That, to my mind, is a bold interpretation of the regulations, and so it will remain to be seen now if CAS would disturb that.”

Success at CAS, he added, would likely depend on whether each athlete’s situation is judged on its own merits — and any appeal must first go back to the Nationality Review Panel that refused the applications.

The sports lawyer Dr Emir Crowne, speaking to Observer Online, took the same view of the grouping.