Considering he's an experienced, senior player, he's actually barely played in the last couple of years. The amount of appearances a player makes is heavily slanted in favor of young players in any cas. Hence, for older players like Ciftci it's a dreadful look to have played as little as he has, and with such a tiny amount at the top level. Last European season, he played under 1,000 minutes of competitive football in the top flight. At his time in Perth, he made just eleven starts and four substitute appearances. You'd expect a young domestic player for a relegation struggling team like St. Johnstone to do similar, and also to get a similar number of goals (none.)
The rest of that season was spent sitting on the bench in the Turkish second division, where he made eleven appearances, every single one of them as a substitute. (He did start, and score, in the Cup, and I can't even be arsed looking up the strength of the opposition. I assume it's whatever the equivalent of a pub team is in Asia Minor.)
The last time he's had anything even close to resembling a successful run in a team was all the way back in 2020/21, again in the Turkish second tier, and even then he was hardly ever-present and was on the bench just as often as not.
Hate to say it but I think the club walked into this one. Yes, you can make the case that if we're not allowed to have him, the "Saintees" shouldn't either, but I'll take that as once bitten twice shy from the SFA.
While I think that Imrie could certainly motivate and get the best out of him, I can understand why the SFA feel differently and think it's just another chancer coming back to a place he can easily get a wage. For me, this is the correct decision from the governing authorities according to the rules that have been set.