Türkiye player banned for two games for hand gesture

UEFA banned Turkish player Merih Demiral for two matches on Friday for making a controversial hand gesture at the European Championships. The incident sparked a diplomatic row between Turkey and host country Germany.

Due to the suspension, Demiral will not be able to take part in his team’s quarter-final against the Netherlands on Saturday. If Turkey advances, he will also not be able to take part in the semi-final.

The Turkish Football Federation has joined Turkish government officials in condemning the ban but said it cannot appeal because the ban is under the three-match limit. The leader of Turkey’s nationalist party urged the team to boycott Saturday’s match and return home unless UEFA’s “shameful decision” is reversed.

After scoring his second goal in Turkey’s round of 16 win over Austria, Demiral made the sign with each hand used by Turkish nationalists and associated with the ultra-nationalist Turkish organization Ülkü Ocaklari, better known as the Grey Wolves.

Demiral said it was an innocent expression of national pride and he hoped he would have “more opportunities to make the same gesture again.”

However, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser condemned the gesture as “racism”, and Cem Özdemir, a German politician of Turkish descent, said the gesture stood for “terror, fascism”.

Her comments led to a sharp rebuke from the Turkish authorities and the summons of the German ambassador on Wednesday.

UEFA said it had banned Demiral “for failing to comply with the general principles of conduct, violating the basic rules of decent behaviour, abusing sporting events for demonstrations of a non-sporting nature and bringing the reputation of football into disrepute”.

Before the decision, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had changed his plans to visit Azerbaijan instead to attend Saturday’s quarter-final, said the 26-year-old defender had merely expressed his “excitement” after his second goal.

The president of the Turkish Football Association, Mehmet Büyükeksi, described the decision as politically motivated and accused the European football association of “double standards”.

“Compared to the fines and suspended sentences for much more serious offenses, including racist behavior in the stands, this two-match ban is completely disproportionate,” the newspaper Hürriyet Buyukeksi quoted him as saying.

Büyükeksi denied Turkish media reports that his association wanted to take the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, arguing that the appeal process is closed for bans of less than three games.

“The two-game penalty took away our right to appeal,” he said.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said the decision “reinforced the view that there is an increasing tendency in certain European countries to act with bias against foreigners.”

Demiral was one of 16 Türkiye players reprimanded in 2019 for showing military salutes at matches when the country was conducting a military offensive in Syria.

The Grey Wolves group was founded as the youth organization of Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which currently forms an alliance with Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party. In the decades following its founding in the 1960s, the group was accused of involvement in politically motivated violence, especially against left-wing groups.

MHP chairman Devlet Bahceli said that if UEFA’s “shameful decision” was not reversed, the team would have to skip Saturday’s match.

“At this point in time, it is a moral and national expectation that our national football team does not play in the Netherlands match and in this way expresses its democratic protest,” he said.