The Grey Wolves (), officially known as Idealist Hearths (, ), is a Turkish far-right political movement and the youth wing of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Commonly described as ultranationalist, neo-fascist, Islamo-nationalist (sometimes secular), and racist, the Grey Wolves have been described by some scholars, journalists, and governments as a death squad and a terrorist organization. Its members deny its political nature and claim it to be a cultural and educational foundation, citing its full official name, Idealist Hearths Educational and Cultural Foundation ().
Established by Colonel Alparslan Türkeş in the late 1960s, the Grey Wolves rose to prominence during the late 1970s political violence in Turkey when its members engaged in urban guerrilla warfare with left-wing militants and activists. Scholars hold it responsible for most of the violence and killings in this period, including the Maraş massacre in December 1978, which killed over 100 Alevis. They are also alleged to have been behind the Taksim Square massacre in May 1977, and to have played a role in the Kurdish–Turkish conflict from 1978 onwards. The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981 by Grey Wolves member Mehmet Ali Ağca was never formally linked to Grey Wolves leaders, and the organization's role remains unclear.
The organization has long been a prominent suspect in investigations into the deep state in Turkey, and is suspected of having close dealings in the past with the Counter-Guerrilla, the Turkish branch of the NATO Operation Gladio, as well as the Turkish mafia. Among the Grey Wolves' prime targets are non-Turkish ethnic minorities such as Kurds, Greeks, and Armenians, and leftist activists.
A staunchly pan-Turkist organization, in the early 1990s the Grey Wolves extended their area of operation into the post-Soviet states with Turkic and Muslim populations. Up to thousands of its members fought in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War on the Azerbaijani side, and the First and Second Chechen–Russian Wars on the Chechen side. After an unsuccessful attempt to seize power in Azerbaijan in 1995, they were banned in that country. In 2005, Kazakhstan also banned the organization, classifying it as a terrorist group.
The organization is also active in Northern Cyprus, and has affiliated branches in Western European nations with a significant Turkish diaspora such as Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. They are the largest right-wing extremist organization in Germany. The Grey Wolves were banned in France in November 2020 for hate speech and political violence, and calls for similar actions are made elsewhere. In May 2021, the European Parliament also called on member states of the European Union to designate it as a terrorist group. In 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit designated the Grey Wolves as a Tier III terrorist organization.
While it was characterized as the MHP's paramilitary or militant wing during the 1976–1980 political violence in Turkey, under Devlet Bahçeli, who assumed the leadership of the MHP and Grey Wolves after Türkeş's death in 1997, the organization claims to have reformed. According to a 2021 poll, the Grey Wolves are supported by 3.2% of the Turkish population.
Name and symbolism
The organization's members are known as Ülkücüler, which literally means "idealists". Its informal name is inspired by the ancient legend of Asena, a she-wolf in the Ergenekon, a Tengrist ancient myth associated with Turkic ethnic origins in the Central Asian steppes. In Turkey, the wolf also symbolizes honour. The Grey Wolves have a "strong emphasis on leadership and hierarchical, military-like organisation."
According to scholar Ahmet İnsel, the Grey wolves also use "fascist slogans imported from America", such as "Love it or leave it" (Ya Sev Ya Terk Et!) and "Communists to Moscow" (Komünistler Moskova'ya).
Grey Wolves Salute
The salutation of the Grey Wolves is "a fist with the little finger and index finger raised" Turkic hand gesture, described by founder Alparslan Türkes, as: "The little finger symbolises the Turks, the index finger symbolises Islam, the ring – or snout – symbolises the world. The point where the remaining three fingers [sic.] join is a stamp. It means: we will put the Turkish-Islamic stamp on the world."
It was banned in Austria in February 2019. In Germany, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Left Party proposed banning the salute in October 2018, calling it fascist.
In the 2024 European Football Cup, Turkish player Merih Demiral displayed the 'wolf salute' after scoring in Turkey's round of 16 match against Austria. Nancy Faeser, Germany's interior minister, condemned use of the gesture, saying: "To use the football championships as a platform for racism is completely unacceptable," and the Turkish ambassador was summoned to explain. Demiral was banned for two games by UEFA for this reason, prompting protests denouncing the suspension by the Turkish Football Federation and Turkish government officials. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan changed plans to visit Azerbaijan to attend the following match after Demiral's suspension to show his support. He had defended the player, saying that he merely expressed his "excitement" after scoring.
A large group of Turkish supporters making their way to the European Championship quarterfinal against the Netherlands made the same nationalistic hand gesture that got Demiral banned from the match, and were dispersed by the police. German authorities believe the group has around 12,100 members in the country. It is monitored by Germany's federal domestic agency. The group has been banned in France, while Austria has banned the use of the Gray Wolf salute.
Ideology The Grey Wolves adhere to an extreme form of Turkish nationalism. It has been characterized as an ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist paramilitary organization by political scholars, the mainstream media, and left-wing sources. R. W. Apple Jr., writing in The New York Times in 1981, described MHP and its satellite groups as a "xenophobic, fanatically nationalist, neofascist network steeped in violence." The organization's ideology emphasizes the early history of the Turkic peoples in Central Asia and blends it with Islamic culture and beliefs; their synthesis of Turkish identity, political ideology, and Islamic beliefs is referred to as "Turkish Islamonationalism", and is widely prevalent in their rhetoric and activities. One of their mottos is: "Your doctor will be a Turk and your medicine will be Islam." Other sources have described it as secular.
Their ideology is based on a "superiority" of the Turkish "race" and the Turkish nation. According to Peters, they strive for an "ideal" Turkish nation, which they define as "Sunni-Islamic and mono-ethnic: only inhabited by 'true' Turks." A Turk is defined as someone who lives in the Turkish territory, feels Turkish and calls themselves Turkish. In their ideology and activities, they are hostile to virtually all non-Turkish or non-Sunni elements within Turkey, including Kurds, Alevis, Arabs, Armenians, Greeks, Christians, and Jews. They embrace anti-Semitic conspiracy theories such as those put forward by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and have distributed the Turkish translation of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
The Grey Wolves are Pan-Turkist and seek to unite the Turkic peoples in one state stretching from the Balkans to Central Asia. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Grey Wolves called for "a revived Turkish empire embracing newly independent Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union." They have proposed "a pan-Turkish extension of the Turkish nation-state." Due to their pan-Turkic agenda they are hostile towards China, Iran, and Russia.
The Grey Wolves are anti-communist and have a history of violence toward leftists.
Base According to sociologist , the Grey Wolves—"the militant youth wing of the Turkish ethnic nationalists that are dissatisfied with the inertia of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) camp"—are supported by 3.6% of the Turkish electorate as of 2014. A 2021 poll by Kadir Has University found that a similar percentage, 3.2% of respondents identify as Ülkücü, or supporters of the Grey Wolves.
According to analyst Ankarali Jan, the Grey Wolves have a largely unofficial presence in Turkey's major universities, but their "real power is on the streets, among disaffected poor people in predominantly Turkish Sunni neighbourhoods." Norm Dixon wrote in the Green Left Weekly in 1999 that the MHP and Grey Wolves "retain strong support within the military." In 2018, Tom Stevenson described it as a "street movement."
Links to the Turkish government and NATO
In the late 1970s, former military prosecutor and Turkish Supreme Court Justice Emin Değer documented collaboration between the Grey Wolves, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Counter-Guerrilla, the Turkish stay-behind anti-communist organization organized under NATO's Operation Gladio, a plan for guerrilla warfare in case of a communist takeover. Martin Lee writes that the Counter-Guerrilla supplied weapons to the Grey Wolves, while according to Tim Jacoby, the CIA transferred guns and explosives to Grey Wolves units through an agent in the 1970s.
During the 1996 Susurluk scandal, the Grey Wolves were accused of being members of the Counter-Guerrilla. Abdullah Çatlı, second-in-command of the Grey Wolves leadership, was killed during the Susurluk car crash, which sparked the scandal. The April 1997 report of the Turkish National Assembly's investigative committee "offered considerable evidence of close ties between state authorities and criminal gangs, including the use of the Grey Wolves to carry out illegal activities."
In 2008 the Ergenekon trials, a court document revealed that the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) armed and funded Grey Wolves members to carry out political murders. They mostly targeted members of the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), which attacked Turkish embassies abroad in retaliation for the Turkish state's continued denial of the Armenian genocide. The Turkish intelligence services also made use of the Grey Wolves in the Kurdish–Turkish conflict, by offering them amnesty for their crimes in exchange.
In 2018, the AK Party formed an alliance with the MHP which succeeded in re-electing President Erdoğan. In 2022, concerns around the close connections between the Turkish government and the Grey Wolves caused the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament to recommend that the Grey Wolves be banned in the European Union.
History According to Ruben Safrastyan, because the Grey Wolves are subtle and often formally operate as cultural and sports organizations, information about them is scarce.
Early history The Grey Wolves organization was formed by Colonel Alparslan Türkeş in the late 1960s as the paramilitary wing of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). In 1968, over a hundred camps for ideological and paramilitary training were founded by Türkeş across Turkey. Canefe and Bora describe it as a grassroots fascist network, which had an active role in the economy, education, and neighbourhoods. Nasuh Uslu characterized it as a well-disciplined paramilitary organization, while Joshua D. Hendrick compared its organization to the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS). Young male students and economic migrants from rural areas who have settled in Istanbul and Ankara made up the majority of its members. In 1973 Israeli orientalist Jacob M. Landau wrote that the importance of the Grey Wolves "is attested to by the fact that Türkeş himself assumed responsibility for the formation of these youth groups and assigned the supervision of their training to two of his close associates".
1970s violence and 1980 coup