Germany Urges DITIB to Cut Ties With Erdogan Over Islamist Agenda

Ger­many has urged DITIB mosques to cut ties with Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan amid con­cerns over his anti­semitism and Islamist agen­da. On 11 Sep­tem­ber 2025, The Jerusalem Post report­ed that a Fed­er­al Min­istry of Inte­ri­or spokesper­son had called on Germany’s largest Turk­ish-Islam­ic asso­ci­a­tion to dis­tance itself from Erdo­gan. The arti­cle begins:

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.”

Key Points

• Ger­many demands DITIB, its largest Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tion, cut ties to Erdo­gan over his anti­se­mit­ic and Islamist rhetoric, espe­cial­ly after Diyanet’s Ali Erbaş called for jihad against Israel.
• DITIB’s close links to Turkey’s Diyanet are a major Ger­man con­cern; offi­cials want the group to pub­licly reject Islamism and anti­semitism and respect Israel’s right to exist.
• Ger­many now trains imams local­ly to reduce Ankara’s influ­ence, after long sup­port­ing DITIB-sent imams trained by Turkey.
• DITIB has faced scan­dals involv­ing Turk­ish espi­onage and ties to hard­line Islamist and nation­al­ist groups, rais­ing fears it could fos­ter radicalization.

DITIB: Erdogan’s Influence Vehicle over German Muslims

The Turk­ish-Islam­ic Union for Reli­gious Affairs (DITIB) has repeat­ed­ly come under scruti­ny for its role as a Turk­ish influ­ence vehi­cle on the Ger­man state, with crit­ics and intel­li­gence agen­cies accus­ing it of trans­mit­ting the polit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal pref­er­ences of the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment to the dias­po­ra. Ger­man author­i­ties and polit­i­cal lead­ers have urged gov­ern­ment action to restrict DITIB’s influ­ence, point­ing to its orga­ni­za­tion­al and finan­cial ties to the Pres­i­den­cy of Reli­gious Affairs (Diyanet) in Ankara, which reports direct­ly to Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdogan—a fig­ure Ger­man offi­cials increas­ing­ly asso­ciate with both Islamist poli­cies and import­ed anti­semitism, par­tic­u­lar­ly after Diyanet head Ali Erbas described Israel as a “rusty dag­ger in the heart of Islam­ic geog­ra­phy” fol­low­ing Hamas’ Octo­ber 7 attacks

. Crit­ics argue that DITIB, as Erdogan’s “long arm,” func­tions not only as a reli­gious asso­ci­a­tion but also as a plat­form for Erdogan’s influ­ence, chan­nel­ing Turk­ish gov­ern­ment narratives—including hos­til­i­ty toward Israel, sup­port for the Pales­tin­ian cause, and skep­ti­cism of West­ern liberalism—into Germany’s Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties. This has height­ened Ger­man secu­ri­ty con­cerns, espe­cial­ly as its activ­i­ties extend beyond reli­gious affairs to include sur­veil­lance of dias­po­ra dis­senters and polit­i­cal opponents.

While DITIB’s influ­ence is increas­ing­ly met with Ger­man coun­ter­mea­sures, includ­ing bans on for­eign-trained imams and calls for reduced state part­ner­ship with the orga­ni­za­tion, crit­ics note that its abil­i­ty to mobi­lize large seg­ments of the Turk­ish-Ger­man population—and its con­tin­ued role in events like the recent Istan­bul Gaza Con­fer­ence, which unit­ed Diyanet, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, and oth­er Islamist actors—makes it a per­sis­tent con­duit for Turk­ish soft pow­er and a sub­ject of ongo­ing polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy in Germany.

Exter­nal references:

• Erdo­gan’s Will­ing Helpers

• Germany’s Con­sti­tu­tion­al Pro­tec­tion Report: Turk­ish Influ­ence in Ger­many (2022)

• Ger­many Inves­ti­gates Turk­ish Con­sulate Employ­ee Over Sus­pect­ed Espionage

Dis­claimer

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