When Turkish national footballer Merih Demiral flashed the “wolf salute” during the 2024 European Championship, it sparked heated debate. The hand sign is the emblem of the far-right “Grey Wolves.” For Green politician Cem Özdemir, it is not a marker of “Turkish identity” but a “symbol of oppression, hatred, and fanaticism.” The ultranationalist movement is expanding across Europe, with Germany one of its main strongholds. The ARD documentary Im Visier der Grauen Wölfe (In the Crosshairs of the Grey Wolves) by Jan-Philipp Scholz, Yağmur Ekim Çay, and Annkathrin Weis captures this with stark clarity. It exposes the organization’s inner workings, reveals its structures, and shows how freely it operates in Germany despite not being banned.
The film opens in a small Belgian town near the German border: during the Kurdish Newroz festivities, a family was brutally attacked. A mob chased them to their home, threatened to burn it down, and shouted that they would be beheaded. Police did not intervene. The family fled and has never been able to return. “Why are you celebrating Kurdish festivals here? Kurds are banned here,” the traumatized grandfather recalls hearing again and again in his interview.
The attackers were not random individuals but an organized group. Online, they boasted about the assault. “Kurds are terrorists,” one declared, adding that the police could not touch him because his friends would protect him.
In Germany, too, the “Grey Wolves” operate openly. The domestic intelligence service estimates nearly 13,000 followers. Their ideology dates back to 1950s Turkey: the vision of a “Turan” empire uniting all Turkic peoples from the Balkans to the Far East under Turkish leadership. Kurds, Jews, Alevis, Armenians, homosexuals, and dissenters are defined as enemies. “We fight until the last drop of blood,” their social media posts proclaim.
The organization in Germany is structured into three umbrella groups: ADÜTDF, with some 7,000 members across 200 local branches; ATİB, with about 2,500 members; and ANF, with roughly 1,000. Their strongholds are in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, and North Rhine-Westphalia, with headquarters in Cologne, Frankfurt, and Ludwigshafen.
The documentary takes viewers undercover to a gathering in Frankfurt: sermons on nationalism, football clubs used as recruitment hubs, children taught a blend of religious instruction and nationalist indoctrination. In Duisburg, around 90 children not only study the Quran but also learn to venerate Alparslan Türkeş, founder of the movement, who once declared: “Kill anyone who turns away from our cause.”
Authorities often look the other way. Youth offices dismiss concerns, and the intelligence services claim limited responsibility. Yet the violent record of the “Grey Wolves” is well-documented: pogroms, bombings, and hundreds of murders in Turkey.
The political response remains muted. Conservative CDU politician Salim Çakmak warns that the movement is already seeking influence within German parties and public administration—just as in Turkey, where their party, the MHP, has been part of the government since 2018. France has banned the Grey Wolves, Austria has criminalized the wolf salute. In Germany, however, initiatives to outlaw the movement have so far failed.
Özdemir accuses the federal government of downplaying the threat—out of deference to Turkey, which Berlin still relies on in refugee policy, foreign affairs, and arms cooperation. “So they look away when fanaticism and hatred are planted in children’s heads here in Germany,” he says.
North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) describes the Grey Wolves as dangerous but remains vague: “If we have the chance to ban them, they will be banned.” But when will that threshold be reached? That is the question the film poses—and leaves its viewers unsettled. Downplaying, relativizing, or ignoring the problem is no longer an option.
