Radical: A Turkish right-wing extremist organization in Germany

Kemal Bozay: The former leader of the Grey Wolves, Alparslan Türkeş, explained this supposed contradiction in 1995 as the mobilization of European Turkism. Accordingly, Turks must represent their nationalist interests and roots, even if they live scattered across Europe – at least according to Türkeş and the Grey Wolves.

What is Turkism?

Turkish right-wing extremists define it as a chain of various Turkic tribes that settled in places like Central Asia or Russia. They aspire to be reunited in a Greater Turkish Empire called “Turan,” which stretches from the Great Wall of China to Central Anatolia. This ideology is called Turanism.

But that region has long not just been home to Turkish people.

Hence the denigration of all who are not committed to Turkism. This racism is primarily directed against the minorities living in Turkey: Kurds, Alevis, Jews and especially Armenians.

Doesn’t denigration also lead to the exaltation of one’s “own people”?

Absolutely. The exaltation of the Turkish race and nation is a core element in the Grey Wolf ideology.

A leader, an imagined empire, the exaltation of one’s own and the denigration of other “races” – sounds all too familiar. From today’s perspective it seems bizarre, but in the 1970s they even had ties with the NPD.

Alparslan Türkeş was in Germany several times and spoke to various extremist networks in search of allies, including the NPD and the former FAP (Editor’s note: The Freedom German Workers’ Party was then the largest militant neo-Nazi organization in Germany. It was banned in 1995). But today Turks and Muslims are the chief stereotypical enemies for German right-wing extremists, which is why there is no longer a basis for a relationship despite ideological closeness.

The Grey Wolves are now estimated to be the largest right-wing extremist organization in Germany. The approximately 18,000 members are organized in associations.

Officially, they call themselves German-Turkish cultural associations, in Turkish they are called Ülkücü. From 1977, Turkish parties were prohibited from setting up branches abroad. That’s why the MHP party founded by Alparslan Türkeş had to organize itself here in Ülkücü associations. In 1978, the ADÜTDF was the first umbrella organization to network the local associations. In the 1980s, the ATIB (Union of Turkish-Islamic Cultural Associations in Europe), which sees itself more as an Islamic wing, split off. However, its members also identify with the tradition of the Grey Wolf.

What kind of associations are these?

They’re meeting places where there is common prayer, cultural and sporting events or offers of assistance for the communities – but also for educational work and campaigns that convey anti-democratic positions. You’ll find portraits of the leader Alparslan Türkeş in all these places. Who, by the way, was an admirer of Hitler.

What is anti-democratic about the Grey Wolves?

This principle of a great leader at the top. And enormous hostility towards minorities and political opponents, which is also expressed in open violence. The MHP had several Turkish journalists and intellectuals murdered as early as the 1960s. The Grey Wolves later massacred people in Maraş, Çorum and Sivas: pogroms that were primarily directed against Alevis and left-wing trade unionists, journalists, politicians and academics.

There were also murder victims in Germany. In 1980 the communist Celalettin Kesim was stabbed to death in Berlin. How violent are the Grey Wolves today?

The violence has never stopped. In 1995 the young Kurd Seyfettin Kalan was murdered. In the late 1990s Erol Ispir.

Wait a minute, they were all murdered in Germany?

In Neumünster. In Cologne. Celalettin Kesim in Berlin. The violence of the Wolves didn’t stop at the German border. Right now, the MHP has become more visible as a coalition partner of the AKP in Germany. When the German Parliament published the Armenia Resolution in 2016 – recognizing that the massacre of the Armenians committed by the Ottoman Empire was genocide – MHP-affiliated networks launched a smear campaign against German politicians, and politicians of Turkish origin received death threats. The anti-democratic menace emanating from this movement is obvious.

A ban on the Grey Wolves is now being considered. Would that be effective?

That would be a step in the right direction, especially symbolically. It is important to show that right-wing extremism in post-migration society is not just a German phenomenon, but also exists in immigrant communities. If right-wing extremism is banned, it has to apply to German as well as to Serbian, Croatian or Turkish right-wing extremism.



Dr. Kemal Bozay is Professor of Social Work and Social Sciences at the IUBH International University in Cologne. Bozay has been researching Turkish right-wing extremism and other post-migration “inequality ideologies” for years.

This article was published 8 Jan 2021 under the license CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0-DE.

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