Fréderike Geerdink
That it was the Netherlands that kicked Turkey out of the European Championships, well, I shrug my shoulders about that, I’m not a dedicated Dutch team supporter and nationalism is just not my cup of tea. But maybe, just maybe, as disgusting as it was, the Grey Wolf sign Turkish player Merih Demiral made, brought us something good: exposure of the fascist ideology that keeps Turkey in its grip.
But before we get serious, let me highlight the ultra-happy masses of Kurds that flooded my timeline after Turkey lost 2-1 against the Netherlands. Loads of schadenfreude about Turkey’s defeat, not in a dirty way but humorous and defiant. “Holendistan”was thanked, memes were born, and for the rest I saw just an outburst of joy. This is, I have noticed over the years, always the case when Turkey loses in some big tournament, but this time it was exceptionally exuberant. Football became a metaphor in extremis.
Tidal wave
Demiral may have thought he would get away with the Grey Wolf sign that he made with both his hands after his second goal against Austria, earlier in the tournament. But UEFA has rules and it was only logical and justified that he and the team were punished for it.
While the punishment was anticipated, a truly unprecedented tidal wave of news and background articles and social media postings about the meaning of the Grey Wolf sign emerged (to which I contributed myself too on Dutch public radio) It was wonderful.
I have my criticisms of course, because I don’t think that the articles in general zoomed out far enough to really be able to grasp how deeply problematic the Grey Wolf sign is. It is not just a sign or group that gets either more or less popular depending on political dynamics in Turkey. The Grey Wolves, founded in the 1960s, and the hand gesture that emerged in the early 1990s, could only become as influential as they did because there was a fertile soil in which the seed was planted. That fertile soil is Turkish fascism since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923.
Brutality
That ideology prescribes that every Muslim in Turkey is a Sunni Turk, also the people who are not Turks, like Kurds, and also the ones who are not Sunni, like Alevis. All other identities have from the very beginning of the Republic been excluded: Greeks and Jews, but especially Armenians. These non-Muslim groups were considered to be ‘enemies from within’, with the Armenians as the ultimate enemy. Both those included and excluded were forced into compliance with unimaginable brutality. The Armenian genocide, although executed before the republic was founded (but the ideology didn’t emerge out of nowhere in 1923), was an example, and so were the Dersim massacres in the 1930s, in which Alevi Kurds were massacred on a large scale.
These atrocities are usually not explicitly mentioned when the Grey Wolves are explained, but in my humble opinion, they must be included as the inevitable ultimate consequence of what Turkish fascism is about. It is into this soil that Türkeş dropped his wolverine seed, and he knew it would bud. Later mass murders, like those in Maraş and Sivas (Demiral made his hand gestures on the very day the Sivas massacre was commemorated, imagine that!), are branches of the same tree. That in those horrific crimes Grey Wolf gestures were made and in Dersim they were not, is merely due to the gesture not existing yet – the ideology was well alive.
Defiance
No wonder the people who have borne the brunt of the Grey Wolves fascism – Alevis, Kurds, leftists – reacted the fiercest when football player Demiral did the wonderfully stupid thing he did. And I applaud them for keeping it so civil, without resorting to violent fantasies and without transgressing into filthy nationalism themselves. But in the extreme joy over Turkey’s loss, I saw a deep defiance too. The Grey Wolf had triggered its own exposure, and then crumbled. I know Kurds feel a hope in that: you cannot remain a Grey Wolf unpunished forever, and you cannot forever be a Grey Wolf without consequences. There is a long road ahead to score the Grey Wolves and everything it stands for into oblivion, but one day the fascists will pay the prize. One day they will be defeated.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan
