An Istanbul court on Monday ordered the retrial of the chairman of Turkish football giant Fenerbahce, who had faced a lengthy jail term over a match-fixing scandal that rocked the country's most popular sport.

The court accepted an appeal by Aziz Yildirim against an April ruling by the supreme court of appeal that had upheld his jail term of six years and three months, the private Dogan news agency reported.

The court ruled that rejecting the demand by Yildirim and 16 others for retrial would violate the law of equality. But it also rejected a claim by him that evidence in the case had been tampered with.

It was not immediately clear when the new trial would start. Yildirim's legal team was not immediately available for comment.

Yildirim, 61, was first sentenced to jail and fined 1.3 million lira ($580,000) in 2012 for match fixing during the 2010-2011 season.

In all, 93 people were originally convicted in the case and European football's governing body UEFA barred Fenerbahce from the Champions' League for two seasons as a result.

Yildirim served about a year of his original sentence before being freed pending an appeal in July 2012.

The chairman, a former professional footballer who became head of Fenerbahce in 1998, had previously denounced the verdict against him as a political plot.

The affair shocked Turkish football fans and raised fears that corruption had penetrated the highest levels of a sport that arouses fanatical passions in the country.