Germany Urges DITIB Mosque Association to Cut Erdogan Ties

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment has urged the coun­try’s main mosque asso­ci­a­tion — the Turk­ish-Islam­ic Union for Reli­gious Affairs (DITIB) — to cut ties with Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan due to his anti­se­mit­ic and Islamist state­ments. “We expect [DITIB] to clear­ly dis­tance them­selves from orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als who spread anti­se­mit­ic mes­sages or pro­mote Islamist agen­das,” a Fed­er­al Min­istry of Inte­ri­or spokesper­son told Ger­man media. Con­cerns about DITIB arose fol­low­ing the Mus­lim Schol­ars Meet­ing in Istan­bul on August 22, which brought over 150 Islam­ic schol­ars from 50 coun­tries to the cap­i­tal to dis­cuss Gaza. The meet­ing was con­vened by the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Mus­lim Schol­ars and the Turk­ish Pres­i­den­cy of Reli­gious Affairs (also known as Diyanet), the lat­ter of whose pres­i­dent, Ali Erbas, called on Pales­tini­ans to use “all legit­i­mate means of resis­tance against the Zion­ist occu­pa­tion, includ­ing armed resistance.”

Read more: https://www.jpost.com/international/article-867197

Key Points

• DITIB is sub­or­di­nate to Turkey’s Diyanet reli­gious author­i­ty and finan­cial­ly depen­dent on it, with the asso­ci­a­tion some­times called the long arm of Erdo­gan oper­at­ing around 1,000 mosques in Germany.
• Ter­ror­ism expert Nico­las Stock­ham­mer warned that Diyanet could instru­men­tal­ize DITIB mosques to preach rad­i­cal con­tent and push younger peo­ple into the rad­i­cal sphere, with con­nec­tions to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood becom­ing closer.
• Ger­many’s Min­istry of Inte­ri­or stat­ed in 2020 that DITIB not only con­tributes to the active for­ma­tion of opin­ion in the inter­ests of the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment but also offers the Turk­ish Intel­li­gence Ser­vice many poten­tial inform­ers and whistleblowers.
• Accord­ing to a ZDF report, at least nine­teen DITIB imams con­duct­ed espi­onage against tar­gets in Ger­many on behalf of Turkey, high­light­ing con­cerns about Turk­ish gov­ern­ment intel­li­gence oper­a­tions through reli­gious institutions.

DITIB in Germany: How Turkey’s Diyanet Controls 900 Mosques and Shapes Muslim Communities

The Turk­ish-Islam­ic Union for Reli­gious Affairs (DITIB) oper­ates as a mosque umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion man­ag­ing over 900 mosques in Ger­many, func­tion­ing as the Ger­man branch of Turkey’s Direc­torate of Reli­gious Affairs (Diyanet). The orga­ni­za­tion main­tains struc­tur­al depen­dence on the Turk­ish state, with imams sent from Ankara and salaries paid by either the Diyanet or local Turk­ish consulates.

DITIB rep­re­sen­ta­tives hold seats on advi­so­ry boards of Islam­ic the­ol­o­gy pro­grams at Ger­man uni­ver­si­ties, while the orga­ni­za­tion coop­er­ates with state schools in pro­vid­ing Islam­ic edu­ca­tion. Ger­many has sought to reduce this for­eign influ­ence by cut­ting fund­ing to DITIB and attempt­ing to train imams domes­ti­cal­ly rather than rely­ing on cler­ics dis­patched from Turkey.

Con­cerns about DITIB’s activ­i­ties have man­i­fest­ed in mul­ti­ple doc­u­ment­ed inci­dents. Board mem­bers at DITIB mosques in Osnabrück, Hildesheim, and Hanover made anti-Semit­ic and anti-con­sti­tu­tion­al Face­book posts, accord­ing to research con­duct­ed by the Göt­tin­gen Insti­tute for Democ­ra­cy Research. Beyond social media con­tro­ver­sies, Ger­man mosques belong­ing to DITIB trans­ferred dona­tions from believ­ers to a Turk­ish Con­sulate Gen­er­al account in Ham­burg, alleged­ly to cov­er a reli­gious attaché’s edu­ca­tion­al expens­es. Inter­nal doc­u­ments revealed that min­i­mum dona­tion amounts were spec­i­fied, with threats report­ed­ly made to with­draw imams from com­mu­ni­ties that failed to meet fundrais­ing targets.

The orga­ni­za­tion’s prox­im­i­ty to Islamist ide­ol­o­gy has emerged through var­i­ous chan­nels. A DITIB imam in Stuttgart praised Hamas founder Ahmad Yasin on Face­book, describ­ing him as hav­ing mes­sages for those who care about Jerusalem. This inci­dent exem­pli­fied ongo­ing crit­i­cism of DITIB’s prox­im­i­ty to Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan. Sim­i­lar­ly, coop­er­a­tion between DITIB and Ger­man state schools remained con­tentious, with North Rhine-West­phalia announc­ing renewed Islam­ic instruc­tion coop­er­a­tion with DITIB despite a 2017 ter­mi­na­tion fol­low­ing an espi­onage affair. Crit­ics not­ed that amend­ed statutes guar­an­tee­ing inde­pen­dence from the Turk­ish state showed only mar­gin­al con­tent changes.

Recent devel­op­ments have inten­si­fied scruti­ny of Turk­ish influ­ence oper­a­tions in Ger­many. Ger­man intel­li­gence iden­ti­fied Turk­ish intel­li­gence con­duct­ing covert oper­a­tions with­in Ger­man bor­ders, tar­get­ing oppo­si­tion groups and dias­po­ra orga­ni­za­tions crit­i­cal of Ankara through sur­veil­lance net­works. The Union of Inter­na­tion­al Democ­rats (UID) emerged as a key instru­ment of Turk­ish state influ­ence, hav­ing engaged in over 1,000 joint activ­i­ties with mosques and NGOs, reveal­ing a strat­e­gy of embed­ding polit­i­cal objec­tives with­in reli­gious net­works such as DITIB.

Ger­many’s inte­ri­or min­istry has for­mal­ly demand­ed that DITIB dis­tance itself from extrem­ist rhetoric, par­tic­u­lar­ly fol­low­ing an August 2025 Istan­bul con­fer­ence where Turkey’s top cler­ic endorsed state­ments sup­port­ing Hamas and call­ing for glob­al jihad.

Accord­ing to Nordic Mon­i­tor, Ger­man offi­cials have allo­cat­ed 465,000 euros to sup­port domes­tic imam train­ing pro­grams, aim­ing to replace the sys­tem where Diyanet appoints and pays cler­ics sta­tioned in Ger­many. Despite these efforts, the Diyanet con­tin­ues expand­ing inter­na­tion­al pro­grams, with 75 grad­u­ates of Turk­ish the­ol­o­gy fac­ul­ties trav­el­ing to Ger­many annu­al­ly for a two-year pro­gram, oblig­at­ing them to serve as imams for at least 10 years.

Exter­nal References:
— Ger­many pres­sures Turk­ish gov­ern­ment-fund­ed mosques to break with rad­i­cal mes­sag­ing — Nordic Monitor
— Diyanet Serves as Tool for Turk­ish Soft Pow­er in Ger­many — Mid­dle East Forum
— Turk­ish-Islam­ic Union for Reli­gious Affairs — Wikipedia

 Dis­claimer:
The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.