Merih Demiral has understood nothing. The Turkish Football Association has learned nothing. We know what the European Football Union (UEFA) has learned when it judges Merih Demiral’s wolf salute. Anyone who wants to evaluate what happened after Demiral’s second goal against Austria on Tuesday evening in Leipzig must remember what happened in Istanbul and Paris in 2019 and how UEFA reacted at the time.
At the time, Turkish troops were waging war in northern Syria. On October 12, the Turkish national team played against Albania in a European Championship qualifier in Istanbul. Six players, including Demiral, celebrated their goal with a military salute. UEFA announced an investigation. Three days later, Turkey played at the Stade de France in Paris, the salute was repeated, and Demiral was again there. UEFA expanded the investigation. It ended after eight weeks with a warning for the players and a fine for the Turkish football association TFF.
Right-wing extremist anthem
Before the start of the European Championship in Germany, one of the suggestions that the TFF made to UEFA for the musical accompaniment of the Turkish team was the song “Ölürüm Türkiyem” by the musician Mustafa Yıldızdoğan. The right-wing extremist ruling party MHP is using his music and sympathies. Yıldızdoğan once had a close relationship with the party’s founder, the neo-fascist and racist Alparslan Türkeş. UEFA decided not to use the song (which was also played by the Özil couple at their wedding celebrations in Istanbul in 2019). The anthem of Turkish right-wing extremism should have no place at the European Championship.
UEFA did the same with “L’amour toujours”, the hit by Italian Gigi d’Agostino that was hijacked by neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists, and to whose melody Austrian fans in the city chanted “Foreigners out” on Tuesday. This also shows the range of intensive attempts by right-wing extremists who are anti-constitutional and hostile to humanity to spread their ideology among the people. After the game, the Austrian neo-Nazi (retired, according to his own admission) and Identitarian leader Martin Sellner, in his typically brazen manner, accused Austria coach Ralf Rangnick of having “taken the nation’s momentum away” with “left-wing anti-fascist slogans”.
Officials were warned
Sellner cannot, no, should not be credited with momentum, but rather laughed at. And heed what Austrian international Michael Gregoritsch demanded after the defeat: to distance himself as far as possible from such ideas. But UEFA cannot ban Sellner. Merih Demiral can.
The wolf salute, the symbol of the right-wing extremist Grey Wolves, is an intensification of the military salute from 2019 by a player who clearly does not want to understand. Europe’s football officials, in turn, were warned, if not by their experience with Turkish nationalism in the past, then at the very latest by the TFF’s request for music. The TFF, in turn, should have derived a message from the rejection of the song and passed it on to its players. But if warnings do not lead to a learning effect, then sanctions must be imposed. Merih Demiral no longer deserves a stage at this European Championship.
