The "wolf salute" recently caused huge controversy at the 2024 European Football Championship when Turkish footballer Merih Demiral made a hand gesture after scoring a goal for Turkey in a match against Austria, which his team won 2-1.
"Symbols of Turkish ultra-right extremists have no place in our stadiums," German Interior Minister Nancy Fesser said in a post on IX.
UEFA subsequently punished Demiral with a two-match ban.
Turkey hit back by accusing Berlin of "xenophobia" over criticism of the wolf salute, and Turkish President Erdogan defended Demiral, saying:
"Does anyone wonder why the German national jersey has an eagle and the French has a rooster? Merih Demiral showed how excited he was with that gesture."
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For many, the wolf salute is a direct association with the Gray Wolves organization, also known as the "Idealist hearth".
It is the ultra-nationalist youth wing of the Nationalist Movement Party (MDP) in Turkey, which is an ally of President Erdogan's ruling AKP.
Neither the wolf salute nor the Gray Wolves organization is banned in Germany.
Austria and France took stricter steps - the former banned the salute, and the latter banned all activities of the organization.
'Right-wing extremist organization'
"When we mention the Gray Wolves movement in Germany, we're actually talking about a wider ecosystem of clubs, coffeehouses, local gatherings from the region," says Burdzu Ozcelik, senior research fellow for Middle East security at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.
She points out that people who associate themselves with the Gray Wolves in Germany have varying degrees of connection, membership or commitment to the group and are generally fluid in their affections.
Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) classifies the Gray Wolves as a right-wing extremist group with 18.500 to 20.000 members in the country.
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Turks constitute the largest single ethnic minority group in Germany, with a total of approximately 3 million Turkish citizens and German citizens of Turkish origin.
Germany has a total of about 84 million inhabitants.
"Among the majority of the Turkish diaspora in Europe, nationalist tendencies and symbols are quite strong," says journalist Kemal Kan, an expert on nationalism in Turkey.
"Islamists and nationalists are well organized. And that's why European governments are generally concerned that these political organizations, or criminal structures, have the potential to cause tensions," he says.
"They want to put in place mechanisms to contain not only their own right-wing extremist groups, but also those within migrant communities."
Violent activities
The Gray Wolves have been accused of various violent acts both in Turkey and in Europe since the seventies.
One of the most famous cases in which the organization was involved was the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981 by Mehmet Ali Agca, a member of the Gray Wolves.
The head of the Catholic Church was shot and wounded in that attack.
The group was embroiled in street conflicts in Turkey in the 1970s and 1980s, when its members participated in an urban guerrilla war against left-wing militants.
The Gray Wolves are believed to have ties to the "Turkish deep state," an alleged network of powerful, anti-democratic coalitions within Turkey's political and bureaucratic structures.
In recent years, various street conflicts involving Gray Wolves have also broken out in European cities.
Political analyst Burdžu Ozcelik says these incidents have created an atmosphere of fear, sparking a wider debate about what should be done with the group.
In Germany, although controversial, the Gray Wolves are not an illegal group.
Austria, however, banned the use of the wolf salute in 2019, while France banned all Gray Wolf activities in 2020.
In 2021, the European Parliament recommended that the Gray Wolves be added to the EU terrorist list.
The dispute over the organization crosses European borders.
In Azerbaijan, a country with close historical and linguistic ties to Turkey, the group sought to capitalize on the country's rise in nationalism after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
"The Gray Wolves became controversial in Azerbaijan after their alleged involvement in a failed coup in 1995 against Heydar Aliyev, the father of current president Ilham Aliyev," says Konul Halilova, BBC News Azerbaijani editor.
"Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB general, saw this group as a threat to his regime. As a result, the Gray Wolves were banned in Azerbaijan, and their leader was killed during an attempted coup."
In 2005, Kazakhstan, a Central Asian country also with more historical ties to Turkey through language and culture, declared the organization illegal, also classifying it as a "terrorist group".
Turkey claims that there is no movement called Gray Wolves and that banning the wolf salute is unacceptable.
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The wolf as a leading figure
"The wolf symbol is one of the most important symbols for Turks," Ahmet Tasagil, a professor at the Department of Turkish Language and Literature at Istanbul's Jedetipe University, told the Anadolu news agency.
"All Turkic tribes living in Central Asia used this symbol in the 4th and 5th centuries," he says.
He also points to sources from the 12th and 13th centuries that mention that the Turks, upon arriving in Anatolia, followed the wolf, according to Armenian, Syrian and other Middle Eastern legends.
"For Turks, the wolf is a leading figure, it represents wisdom," he says.
During the Ottoman period at the end of the 19th century, the wolf symbol was used in various forms, and in the early years of modern Turkey it appeared on banknotes and stamps.
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The wolf greeting itself, however, is of much more recent origin.
He spoke for the first time in Azerbaijan in the early nineties amid mass protests, says Konul Halilova.
"These protests contributed to the country's independence and the fall of the Soviet Union. This gesture, even when it is not widely used, has become a symbol of Turkishness for some people," she says.
"For them, he symbolized a cultural and ethnic identity that was suppressed during Soviet rule," she says.
The founder of the Nationalist Movement Party in Turkey is believed to have seen the wolf salute being used during protests in Azerbaijan in 1992 and adopted it as the symbol for the Gray Wolves in Turkey.
'Not a national symbol'
"In the 1990s, the Gray Wolves were part of a general wave of nationalist sentiment and gained an identity by speaking out against the exclusion of the Kurdish minority," says nationalism expert Kemal Khan.
He points out that in Turkey, many political leaders across the spectrum have used the wolf salute to ingratiate themselves with nationalist voters.
"However, this salute was never accepted as a national symbol in Turkey," he says.
Burdžu Ozcelik agrees with that.
"Many Turks, although they are very open about their own Turkish nationalist sentiment and very proud of it, do not associate themselves with the Gray Wolves," she says.
"It is therefore not a unifying symbol, nor does it represent a wider universal feeling of Turkishness."
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