FILE PHOTO: Soccer Football - Euro 2024 - Round of 16 - Austria v Turkey - Leipzig Stadium, Leipzig, Germany - July 2, 2024 Turkey's Merih Demiral celebrates scoring their first goal with Ismail Yuksek and Ferdi Kadioglu REUTERS/Thilo Schmuelgen/File Photo
BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany summoned Turkey's ambassador on Thursday over a Turkish football player's ultra-nationalist "wolf salute" at a Euro 2024 match, days ahead of a reported trip by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to Berlin to attend his nation's next match.
UEFA, European soccer's governing body, has opened an investigation into Turkish centre back Merih Demiral's mimicking of the shape of a wolf's head with his fingers after scoring in a Euro Championship game against Austria on Tuesday evening.
The gesture is linked to the "Grey Wolves", an ultra-nationalist youth branch of Turkey's Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an ally of Erdogan's AK Party.
"As Euro 2024 hosts, we want sport to unite," Germany's foreign ministry said in a post on X announcing that Turkey's ambassador had been summoned, a day after Turkey's foreign ministry did the same to Germany's ambassador to Ankara.
Turkey's foreign ministry said German authorities' approach to Demiral "involved xenophobia" and UEFA's probe was unacceptable. The ministry has defended the gesture made by Demiral as a historical and cultural symbol that did not target anyone during his celebration of joy at the match.
The German interior minister criticised Demiral's gesture on X, saying that "using the European Football Championship as a platform for racism is completely unacceptable".
Established in the 1960s, the "Grey Wolves" were involved in political violence between leftists and nationalists in Turkey that killed some 5,000 people around the time of a 1980 coup.
The group is outlawed in France and its symbol is banned in Austria. While the wolf salute is not banned in Germany, the group is under surveillance, according to the interior minister.
German and Turkish media reported that Erdogan plans to come to Berlin on Saturday for Turkey's Euro quarter-final match against the Netherlands.
Erdogan changed his schedule to attend the game, NTV and other Turkish media reported. He has been due to attend a summit of Organisation of Turkic States in Azerbaijan on Saturday.
The Turkish embassy in Berlin acknowledged the reports but said it had no information about Erdogan's official programme.
(Reporting by Alexander Ratz in Berlin and Huseyin Hayatsever in Ankara; writing by Miranda Murray; editing by Rachel More and Mark Heinrich)
