Turkish Football Player Suspended for ‘Grey Wolf Salute’

By Paul Vartan Sookiasian

A celebratory hand gesture made by a Turkish football player Tuesday during the European Football Championship in Germany has unleashed a major controversy about the player’s ties to fascist organizations. 

Merih Demiral, who scored both goals in the Turkish national team’s win over Austria, triumphantly flashed a “grey wolf salute,” considered to be an ultranationalist hand symbol most associated with far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and its youth wing – the Grey Wolves. The salute was banned most recently in France, and also in Austria in 2019 as part of a wider law forbidding the use of what it called extremist organization symbols. 

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), which governs the tournament, launched an investigation and late Thursday announced Demiral would be suspended for the next two games. 

In fact, the Grey Wolves symbol is often seen in Azerbaijan, especially in opposition to Armenians. The gesture was flashed by the alleged “eco-protesters” taking part in the Azerbaijani government-coordinated blockade of the Lachin corridor, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the entire Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. 

Many Azerbaijani soldiers have also been photographed flashing the gesture in Karabakh, including at President Aliyev’s military parade through the empty streets of the capital Stepanakert to celebrate its ethnic cleansing. 

Furthermore, in the early days after the 2020 war, Azerbaijani officials welcomed a proposal by the Turkish MHP to build a Grey Wolves school in the captured town of Shushi, however those plans appear to have fizzled out. 

Coincidentally, Turkish President Recep Erdoğan intended to visit Shushi this weekend to take part in a gathering of the Organization of Turkic States, however in light of the Demiral controversy has canceled his attendance to instead attend Turkey’s next qualifier game on Saturday night. 

With the social media debate still raging over what should be considered racist, and Turkish fans now emboldened to defensively rally around the symbol, the situation is now as dynamic and volatile as ever. 

THE FOOTBALL FALL-OUT

Demiral’s actions sparked fierce debate on social media about the origin and meaning of the symbol, and whether it should be qualified as racist. The incident at the qualifier match instigated a wider discussion about the racist underpinnings of aspects of the Turkish state, minority issues, and national identity. While many of Demiral’s supporters on social media feel the symbol is being unfairly attacked, claiming it dates back thousands of years and thus is not a symbol of racism but of pride and culture, others tell a different story. 

According to this Turkish language tweet by activist Mahir Akkoyun, regardless of when the gesture may or may not have been used, it was only popularized in the modern political context in the 1990s by Alparslan Türkeş, founder of the MHP. 

“There was no such thing as the ‘Grey Wolf sign’ in Turkey until 1990. Even idealists didn’t use it. Even Türkeş didn’t know the sign, which is claimed to be the thousands-year-old ‘symbol of Turkishness’. In 1991, Türkeş learned this sign from someone during his visit to Azerbaijan and turned it into the political symbol of MHP and idealism. Just 2 years later, we saw that sign in front of Madımak Hotel [referring to the location of an act of mob arson against Alevis in 1993, also known as the Sivas Massacre, during which 37 people were killed],” the tweet reads. 

Placing it in that context, as reported by Deutsche Welle, the MHP-affiliated Grey Wolves “hold hostile views toward Kurdish, Armenian, Jewish and Christian people, and believe in the superiority of the Turkish nation. In the past, members of the Gray Wolves have committed numerous acts of violence, including murder, particularly in the 1970s.” 

The tournament is taking place in Germany, where the Grey Wolves organization is under surveillance by national security services, and a ban of the symbol has been under consideration but not yet acted upon. Authorities believe there are about 12,500 Grey Wolves in Germany alone. They are also believed responsible for the 2020 vandalizing of the Armenian Genocide monument in Lyon. 

On Wednesday, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser strongly condemned Demiral’s action, declaring that “symbols of Turkish right-wing extremists have no place in our stadiums” and that “using the European Football Championship as a platform for racism is completely unacceptable.”  On Friday the German Foreign Ministry summoned the Turkish ambassador “was urged to explain the gesture and take measures to prevent its further use.”  

Demiral on the other hand doubled down, by tweeting a photo of himself making the salute with the caption: “how happy is the one who says I am a Turk!”, an infamous quote by Turkey’s founder Kemal Ataturk which has been used to intimidate minority groups in Turkey for decades. Demiral also said he intends to continue using the gesture publicly going forward. 

The day after the game, the Turkish Foreign Ministry released a statement calling the investigation into Demiral’s behavior “unacceptable” and accused German authorities of xenophobia.

“We condemn the politically motivated reactions to the use of a historical and cultural symbol as part of a goal celebration in a way that does not target anyone,” the statement read 

Demiral’s video of repeating Atatürk’s famous phrase was retweeted by Azerbaijani Ambassador to the United States Khazar Ibrahim, who ironically earlier this year called himself a “true follower of Dr. Martin Luther King.” 

He preached the importance of tolerance upon being awarded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy Award by the Washington, DC-based MLK Jr. Salute Committee. Following inquiries by CivilNet with the King Center in Atlanta as to why Ibrahim was selected for such a distinction, the Center’s CEO and daughter of Martin Luther King, Dr. Bernice King, stated that the MLK Salute Committee has nothing to do with the King Center in Atlanta or Dr. Martin Luther King. Thus, the name of Dr. MLK was used without authorization to honor the representative of a government that a few months earlier had committed ethnic cleansing, a devastating act of inhumanity of which Ambassador Ibrahim has been a vocal supporter.  

A final reflection from social media: 

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