Last week, US Representative Dina Titus proposed amending the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2022 to ban the extremist Turkish nationalist group known as the Gray Wolves, according to the Asia International News Agency.
It also asked US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to report to Congress within 180 days on the activities of the Gray Wolves - which some have described as a paramilitary death squad - including a review of the criteria for designating this group as a foreign terrorist organization.
The far-right group has already been banned by France, after its members desecrated a memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide, near Lyon and clashed with Armenian protesters.
Last October, French Interior Minister Gérard Darmanin announced the ban of the gray wolves in France, saying it "incites discrimination and hatred and is involved in violence".
In November, the German Bundestag adopted a motion urging the government to ban branches of the group, ban its incitement on the Internet and monitor its activities.
This group became a death squad, engaged in gun battles, street killings, and violence directed against the political left or other races: Kurds, Greeks, and Armenians, and many Gray Wolves volunteered to fight the Armenians during the First Karabakh War (1988-1994) and were responsible for some of the worst atrocities. perpetrated against Armenian civilians and prisoners.
The Gray Wolves of December 1978 were responsible for the Marsh massacre when more than 100 Alevis were killed and the Taksim Square massacre on May 1, 1977. During this violent period, this group worked to encourage and protect the Turkish Army's War Department.
In the aftermath of the 1980 coup in Turkey, the Gray Wolves focused their attacks on the Kurds in Turkey and strongly supported Ankara's occupation of part of Cyprus.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is taking advantage of the activities of the Gray Wolves to intimidate Kurds, Armenians, and members of opposition parties in Turkey, and to mobilize Turks living in Germany to vote for the AKP.
Since his cooperation with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party of Devlet Bahceli, Erdogan has used the gray wolves as a long arm in European countries and countries where there are a large number of Turks to support his policies.
In the European Parliament, a report on Turkey's progress by Spanish socialist Nacho Sanchez Amor suggested placing gray wolves on the EU's terror list. Parliament called on the European Council, the EU's decision-making body and member states "to study the possibility of adding gray wolves to the EU's terrorist list".
The report, passed by 480 to 64 in plenary on May 19, asserts that the gray wolves "particularly threaten people of Kurdish, Armenian or Greek background and anyone they consider to be in opposition."
Of course, it is not at all certain that the Council of the European Union, will proceed to ban this group, because it may not want to irritate Erdogan, who is blackmailing Europe by opening the doors to refugees, temporarily residing in Turkey.
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ANHA
