Shadowy Turkish Ultra-Nationalist Group Under Scrutiny in Europe
On November 30, the Turkish daily Haberturk quoted an anonymous MHP source who denied reports that Idealist Hearths was operating outside of Turkey. However, “Turkish Federation is important for us abroad,” the source said.
Turkish Federation is an umbrella organization of several Turkish diaspora groups affiliated with MHP. While the group is often seen as an extension of the Grey Wolves abroad, its members deny such accusations.
“Today, there is no such organization, and the wolf salute is a symbol that everyone uses,” Orhan Ilhan, head of the France Turkish Federation, told VOA.
However, according to Kemal Can, a columnist for Istanbul-based online news website Gazete Duvar and an author on the MHP’s history, Turkish nationalists sympathetic to the Grey Wolves remain active in Europe under different organizations.
“The absence of an official organization named the Grey Wolves in Europe does not mean that there is no political movement that calls itself the Grey Wolves,” Can told VOA, referring to the Turkish Federation.
EU Terror Designation
Following the ban by French authorities, officials from other European countries have asked for similar actions as part of a widening campaign against extremist organizations.
On November 10, four Italian members of the European Parliament from the far-right Identity and Democracy group proposed to include the Grey Wolves on the European Union terrorist list, saying the organization has links to Turkish far-right and radical Islam, and some of its members have engaged in destabilizing measures and sedition on European soil.”
On November 18, the German Bundestag adopted a motion that urged the government to outlaw the group’s affiliates, prevent its online agitation and monitor its activities.
“Now is the turn of the Grey Wolves, which has links with far-right extremism and organized crime,” Cem Ozdemir, a lawmaker with the opposition Greens, told VOA. “We cannot interfere in how they organize in Turkey, but here, we have the opportunity to stop their operations against people who are living in peace together.”
In its 2019 report, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution estimated that 11,000 people are affiliated with the Idealist movement in Germany. It said the movement in Germany is mainly represented by the two umbrella organizations — the Federation of Associations of Turkish Democratic Idealists, known as Germany Turkish Federation (ADÜTDF), and Turkish-Islamic Union in Europe (ATİB).
Kemal Bozay, a Düsseldorf-based professor at the IUBH University of Applied Sciences, charges that the move from the German Parliament came in response to increased right-wing polarization among the Turkish diaspora.
“As the political climate in Turkey escalates more, and the AKP-MHP coalition increasingly disseminates anti-Kurdish, anti-Alevi and anti-European sentiments, these tensions in Turkey reflect in the society in Germany through the Idealist movement’s affiliates and the AKP’s affiliates,” Bozay told VOA.
Ismail Kupeli, a doctoral researcher at the University of Cologne, stressed that despite mounting pressure on the Grey Wolves, the German Parliament’s motion remains symbolic, with no indication that the German government will take a similar action against the group.
“It looks like a signal, a kind of solidarity with France, but it doesn’t have a real impact for now,” Kupeli told VOA.
Ezel Sahinkaya is a multimedia journalist at VOA’s Extremism Watch Desk covering Turkey, Eurasia, and the Middle East.VOA Turkish Service’s Cem Dalaman in Berlin and Arzu Cakir in Paris contributed to this report.This article is published courtesy of the Voice of America (VOA).
