Flashing the Wolf Salute in Germany

Who's the fascist? You're the fascist!

I’m going to do something I probably shouldn’t and get into this whole matter of the wolf salute.

So what happened?

During the Austria-Turkey soccer game last week, Merih Demirel scored a goal, then did this hand gesture:

Source: TRT

The gesture is associated with pan-Turkic nationalism, mostly known as the Ülkücü (idealist) movement. Their political party is the National Action Party (MHP), which has been a staunch supporter of President Erdoğan since 2015. The Ülkücü, however, are far more than a party-political organization. They have long had very active (and rigidly hierarchical) student movements and are strongly represented in government services, especially in the police and armed forces.

The conventional wisdom among English-language Turkey commentary is that the Turkists are Turkey’s far-right. While that can be true, I think it’s also indicative of an incomplete understanding of Turkish politics as well as far-right politics more broadly. (I recommend Nick Ashdown’s piece in Newlines for a contemporary English-language take on the movement.)

I’m not going to dwell on the constellation on Turkish right-wing political formations here though. I have a post lined up on this later. Instead, I thought it’d be interesting to really zoom in on this event. I think there’s two distinctive world views, two perspectives on recent history and politics, that are clashing over this event.

Here it is, in summary.

The official European perspective: most countries have some kind of fascist strain in them. That can’t be helped. What we can all do is to keep them marginal. If institutions like universities, sports teams, or media organizations have an “incident” like a somewhat fascist photo, or ill-judged tweet, they must launch rigorous investigations and expunged the offending elements. In politics too, far-right parties must also be contained through a “cordon sanitaire”. This is why, for example, the Dutch politician Geert Wilders can win a landslide election, but because many people refuse to work with him, he remains unable to become PM.

Of course sometimes everything fails and far-right leaders do slip through. In these cases, they must be made to denounce the symbols of fascism and sort of clean up their act. If they make an effort in this regard, the establishment will accept them as a center-right force (even if their policies remain kinda fashy). That’s why Giorgia Meloni has distanced herself from overtly fascist things, and is now a perfectly respectable politician to deal with.

So even if far-right politics can’t be maintained, it’s very, very important to suppress the appearance of fascism. This means that the public sphere to be clear of fascist symbols. If we keep doing this over time, far-right nationalism will disappear, and we’ll all be able to enjoy the fruits of social democracy, liberalism etc.

Europeans expect other countries to act this way as well.

On Turkey, they’re not always sure whether to classify the Islamists as center-right or far-right. It’s just very difficult to slice that in a way that’s not anti-Islamic. Plus, the Islamists are in charge, so it’d be really inconvenient to have to cut ties with them.

But Europe is pretty sure that the Turkists (Ülkücü) are far-right. Their militancy and emphasis on ethnicity just has a very familiar Blut und Boden feel to it. Europeans see the wolf sign as the Turkish equivalent of the Roman salute, and they pretty sure that it doesn’t belong in a UEFA match.

Now for the other side of this.

The official Turkish perspective: the Western political sphere, or “civilization” is completely separate from Turkish politics and Turkco-Islamic civilization. Fascism is something that only exists in Western politics. Among the evils inherent in Western political and history (colonialism, communism, capitalism), fascism is the worst. It’s the unbridled expression of Western racism and supremacism. Westerners sometimes try to expunge it from their past, but haven’t been able to do so. German fascism is especially tricky, and even though Germans pretend to be good liberals, Turks know that they’re really fascists to the core.

Sometimes Europeans try to project their own inherent fascism on to other civilizational spheres. They do this to Turkey because they want to infect Turkey with their pesky self-doubt. They want to laden the country with sins it hasn’t committed (see: Armenian genocide) in order to stop its re-emergence as a major world power.

Turkey, of course, has a glorious history unmarked by the grave sins like of fascism. There is no Turkish fascism. There might have been mistakes in Turkey’s history, but these are largely due to infusions of European thought. The Turkish nation is innocent of them.

Turkey’s various right-wing traditions, like Islamism and Turkism, are repositories of Turkey’s wholesome identity. They were separate in the past, but president Erdoğan has bringing them all together under the same umbrella. These days it’s really difficult to tell where Islamism stops and Turkism begins. People often do the sign of the shahada (extended index finger), the rabia sign (four fingers extended) or the sign of the grey wolf, and all are ancient expressions of the indomitable spirit of Turkey [the latter two are actually pretty recent].

There are some movements in Turkey that could be classified as fascist, but these are inherently non-Turkish. They include the PKK, feminists, LGBT activists, and other liberal and leftist movements. These movements pretend that they want to help the weak, but they are really about corrupting the nation and subjugating it to Western fascism.

You may think that’s hyperbole, but that is the metanarrative in the last 15 years of Turkey’s mainstream media.

Merih Demiral probably didn’t know it, but the moment he used the wolf sign, those two views of the world clashed into each other.

Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser tweeted a condemnation of Demiral, UEFA opened an investigation, and Demiral was banned for two games.

They might as well have put out a bat signal for Erdoğan.

The Turkish side has been relatively quiet, building up a theatrical response. The Turkish media sphere is bubbling with anticipation. This is the kind of thing Erdoğan and his people love. It’s the kind of thing that earns them support far beyond their 52 percent voter base.

And sure enough, as I write this, Erdoğan’s plane has touched down in Berlin. The president is due to watch the Netherlands-Turkey game tonight. I don’t know if he’ll do a wolf sign himself - he’s done it before, but it doesn’t really fit his Islamist persona.

Still, I have no doubt that he’ll find some way to one-up the Germans. Tens of millions of Turkish minds are focused on him. He’ll have to satisfy them somehow, and win the clash of world views. He will want to throw the accusation of fascism back at the Germans.

I’m not sure what the Germans are planning. It feels like they’re out of their depth.