The nationalist “wolf salute” could also be seen around the European Championship stadium in Dortmund.
Photo: imago/Lars Berg
In July 2023, a photo of former German international Mesut Özil caused a stir. He smiled and revealed a tattoo: three crescent moons and a howling wolf on his chest, a symbol of Turkey’s ultranationalist Gray Wolves movement. With 18,000 members, it is considered the largest right-wing extremist movement in Germany.
The Turkish team played their first game at the European Football Championship on Tuesday in Dortmund against Georgia (3-1). The Gray Wolves are well connected in the Ruhr area, and many of their symbols could be seen around the stadium: on T-shirts and flags. A number of fans also raised their hands in the “wolf salute”. This Saturday Turkey will play again in Dortmund, this time against Portugal. And educator Burak Yilmaz fears: “The Gray Wolves could approach young people in the stadium area.”
Yilmaz was a referee for a long time in his hometown of Duisburg. At youth games he saw Wolves jerseys and banners. He also heard folk marching songs that put the Turkish nation above all others. “Coaches and parents incited the young players and talked about Turkishness – as if it were a battle,” he reports. Football was already being abused as a political stage here.
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The gray wolves have their origins in Türkiye in the 1960s. They propagate the historical, ethnic and moral superiority of the Turkic peoples. Thousands of emigrants then brought the ideology to Western Europe. Also to Germany.
Since the 1970s, various Turkish workers have tried to gain entry into football clubs, but the regional associations have often rejected them. Integration concepts? There was hardly any back then. So the migrants founded their own clubs. They responded to the accusation of isolating themselves by pointing out that their clubs were only a reaction to the racism of the Germans.
The Gray Wolves took advantage of these tensions and became involved in football as supervisors, coaches and sponsors. In the leisure atmosphere of the clubs, they reach children, young people and their parents of Turkish origin. Many families have lived in Germany for decades but continue to get their news from Turkish media. The wolves can build on this political disorientation, explains political scientist Mahir Tokatli, who researches at RWTH Aachen. The experiences of exclusion are countered by an alternative: Turkish nationalism.
As an Alevite, the social worker Mehmet Tanli feels how the ultranationalists take out their anger on people of Turkish origin who do not support Turkishness. In 2016, after the failed coup attempt in Turkey, Kurdish institutions were also attacked in German cities. Tanli says: “The German authorities didn’t take the Gray Wolves seriously for a long time.”
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution now locates football clubs within their spectrum, for example if they have nationalism in their name, as is the case with “Turanspor”. Turan is considered a synonym for a Greater Turkish Empire. Others use the Old Turkish script or symbols of Ottoman culture, including the number “1453”. In that year, Christian Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans. Burak Yilmaz advocates a ban on gray wolves like in France. This is legally difficult because they are not a party with permanent members, but rather a branched movement.
Nevertheless, Mesut Özil seems like an advertising figure for them. For years, the 2014 world champion was seen as a beacon of hope for a multicultural German society, but after a photo with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2018, he was left out by many German amateur footballers. A footballer who gives everything for Germany and is still rejected by the majority? Many young people of Turkish origin can be found in this biography. The wolves take up this frustration and turn their attention towards Türkiye.
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