Eduard Spertsyan’s move to Al-Ahli has placed Armenia’s national team captain in the same locker room as Turkish defender Merih Demiral, a player who has repeatedly displayed the controversial “Grey Wolves” salute.
At EURO 2024, Demiral made the gesture with both hands after scoring against Austria. UEFA suspended him for two matches, citing violations of basic rules of conduct, the use of a sporting event for a non-sporting manifestation and bringing football into disrepute. Demiral defended the salute as an expression of Turkish pride and said he hoped for “more opportunities to do the same gesture again.” It was not an isolated incident: in June 2025, after the suspension, he was photographed making the salute again during a Turkish national-team visit to North Carolina. The gesture is widely associated with the Grey Wolves, a far-right Turkish ultranationalist movement with a history of political violence. The organization is outlawed in France, its salute is banned in Austria, and German authorities monitor the group. For Armenians, the symbol is especially offensive given the movement’s record of anti-Armenian violence and attacks on Armenian Genocide memorials. In 1984, a Grey Wolves member bombed a genocide memorial outside Paris, injuring 13 people. In 2020, demonstrations linked to the movement targeted Armenians near Lyon, and a memorial was defaced with the group’s name. France banned the organization shortly afterward. Whatever Demiral’s stated intent, the symbol carries a very different meaning for Armenians. He and Armenia’s captain are now teammates at Al-Ahli.