On July 8, 2015, the deportation of 109 Uighur refugees back to China by Thai authorities shifted mob attacks against Asian tourists in Turkey, to protests at the Consulate-General of Thailand in Istanbul and the Thai embassy in Ankara.
After stoning the consulate, smashing the windows and wrenching the doors open, the mob poured consular documents and files onto the street.
Roughly two months later, on Aug 28, a man identified as Adem Karadag, with a fake Turkish passport, was arrested by Thai police in Nong Chok district of Bangkok, as a possible key suspect in the Aug 17 bombing at the Erawan shrine.
He was found with dozens of fake Turkish passports and explosives similar to the ones used in the Erawan blast, Thailand's most deadly peacetime attack.
The recent anti-Thai and anti-Chinese protests by the Grey Wolves and the arrest of an alleged Turkish citizen has sparked theories that the group is behind the deadly bombing that killed 20 and left over 130 injured.
Security analyst Anthony Davis has argued for the strong probability of the Grey Wolves' involvement in the Bangkok blast. But before the blame is laid squarely at their feet, a few key points need to be considered.
First, the Grey Wolves, a group also known as the Idealist Hearts, was founded in February 1968 to break the hegemony of socialist groups in Turkish universities throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Formed by the leader of the Nationalist Action Party, Alparslan Turkes, the group's raison d'etre was anti-communism.
The Nationalist Action Party has since then held firm de facto control of the Idealist Hearts, although the organisation is not a formal sub-branch of the party. Hearts members came to be known as the Grey Wolves because of their logo, originally derived from a Turkic myth.
Until the 1980s, a fierce anti-left stance was combined with Pan-Turkic myths, racism and Islamic discourses under a typical fascistic leadership cult and strict hierarchy. Many Grey Wolves sympathisers were recruited for counter-guerrilla operations and used in the paramilitary actions of the Turkish "deep state" (anti-democratic coalitions with strong influence in Turkish politics) against rising left-wing activism in the country. Members of the group were involved in the murders of left-wing intellectuals and a few massacres against Turkey's Alevite population -- the main base of the far left in that decade.
The 1980 Turkish military coup and the suppression of the Turkish left by the military left the Grey Wolves in an ideological vacuum. With this identity crisis some members became affiliated with the Turkish mafia. Several Hearts members established connections with international crime, with some becoming hit men for international terrorist groups.
One Grey Wolves member, Mehmet Ali Agca, who was convicted of assassinating a prominent left-wing Turkish journalist, was later caught at St Peter's Square after trying to kill Pope Jean Paul in May 1981. In the 2000s the organisation became a nationwide club for a blend of pan-Turkic, Islamist and anti-Kurdish racist ideas. Today the ideology is mostly attractive for Turkey's least educated youth, who hold occasional pan-Turkic rallies.
Despite the Grey Wolves possibly providing a large pool of followers for petty crime, minor mafia activities and even human trafficking, I doubt their capacity and preparedness to conduct a bombing such as that at Bangkok's Erawan shrine. Simply put, the group has never participated in such a transnational mass bombing. The suspect in police custody may be a sympathiser of the organisation in Turkey. The Grey Wolves might have been very agitated in their nationalist feelings for the Uighur cause to develop strong anti-Thai and anti-Chinese responses.
But as an organisation, the Idealist Hearts, or Grey Wolves, under strict control of the leadership of Turkey's Nationalist Action Party, are unlikely to be behind the Bangkok bombings.
M Murat Yurtbilir is an associate lecturer in Turkish studies at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University. His research focuses on Turkish politics, history and foreign policy and international politics in Central Asia. This article first appeared on the New Mandala website.