Turkey Expands Influence Operations in Western Balkans via Mosques

With a height of 50 meters (160 feet) and space for around 8,000 wor­ship­pers, the Namaz­gah mosque in Alba­ni­a’s cap­i­tal Tirana is one of the most impres­sive Islam­ic places of wor­ship in the West­ern Balka­ns. It was part­ly fund­ed with around €30 mil­lion ($34 mil­lion) by the Turk­ish reli­gious author­i­ty Diyanet. Its archi­tec­tur­al inspi­ra­tion is the Blue Mosque in Istan­bul. In Octo­ber 2024, after a con­struc­tion peri­od of around ten years, Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan came to Tirana for the inau­gu­ra­tion of the mosque. While there, he signed an agree­ment to coop­er­ate with Alba­nia on agri­cul­ture and edu­ca­tion, and donat­ed a num­ber of Turk­ish-made drones to the coun­try. Diyanet also secured influ­ence on the board of the new mosque and a Turk­ish imam was appoint­ed, which was cause for dis­may among Albanians.

Read more: https://www.dw.com/en/turkey-ramps-up-political-influence-in-the-western-balkans/a‑73113894

Key Points

• Social sci­en­tist Nathalie Clay­er explains that Turkey’s con­struc­tion of mosques as a means of pro­ject­ing soft pow­er is close­ly linked to fur­ther­ing eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and mil­i­tary inter­ests across the West­ern Balka­ns region.
• Turkey over­took Sau­di Ara­bia as the lead­ing nation fund­ing new mosques in the West­ern Balka­ns fol­low­ing Erdo­gan’s rise to pow­er in 2002 and 2003, with Diyanet secur­ing influ­ence on mosque boards and appoint­ing Turk­ish imams.
• Cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gy expert Rebec­ca Bryant calls Turkey’s infra­struc­ture pol­i­cy infra­struc­ture impe­ri­al­ism, with Turk­ish investors con­struct­ing rail­road lines, ports, hotels, and shop­ping dis­tricts from Sara­je­vo to Geor­gia and Kazakhstan.
• Erdo­gan uses rhetoric about a com­mon des­tiny link­ing Turkey with these coun­tries, with mega-projects intend­ed to sig­nal that Turkey rep­re­sents the future and is more mod­ern than the West, accord­ing to Bryan­t’s analysis.

Turkey Religion Influence Operations: How Diyanet Projects Power Through Mosques Abroad

Turkey employs an exten­sive reli­gious infra­struc­ture to project influ­ence across West­ern democ­ra­cies, with the state-con­trolled Direc­torate of Reli­gious Affairs (Diyanet) serv­ing as the pri­ma­ry vehi­cle. The Diyanet was found­ed in 1924 to monop­o­lize con­trol of Sun­ni Islam under the state, draft­ing week­ly ser­mons deliv­ered at all Turk­ish mosques while employ­ing imams as civ­il ser­vants. This frame­work expand­ed inter­na­tion­al­ly start­ing in the 1980s, when Turkey began man­ag­ing mosques abroad and send­ing imams to pro­mote Turk­ish Islam. After the Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP) came to pow­er in 2002, it quadru­pled the Diyanet’s bud­get and installed sym­pa­thet­ic lead­er­ship, trans­form­ing what had been a sec­u­lar insti­tu­tion into a mega­phone for gov­ern­ment positions.

The scope of Turk­ish reli­gious influ­ence oper­a­tions has grown sub­stan­tial­ly in recent years. With a sig­nif­i­cant gov­ern­ment bud­get, the Diyanet con­trols the con­tent of imams’ speech­es in thou­sands of mosques glob­al­ly, func­tion­ing as a means for polit­i­cal, ide­o­log­i­cal, and secu­ri­ty influ­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly in regions with sub­stan­tial Turk­ish immi­grant pop­u­la­tions. Nordic Mon­i­tor reports that the Diyanet has allo­cat­ed $3.7 bil­lion for 2025, sur­pass­ing the bud­gets of sev­er­al key Turk­ish min­istries, and aims to reach 2.1 mil­lion peo­ple abroad through its net­work of over 900 mosques in Ger­many alone and hun­dreds more across Europe and North Amer­i­ca. Beyond Europe, the orga­ni­za­tion is inten­si­fy­ing efforts in the Balka­ns, Cen­tral Asia, and Africa, where it funds mosque con­struc­tion, sup­ports local reli­gious edu­ca­tion, and trains imams to pro­mote Ankara’s inter­pre­ta­tion of Islam.

The Turk­ish-Islam­ic Union for Reli­gious Affairs (DITIB) exem­pli­fies this transna­tion­al struc­ture. The orga­ni­za­tion is linked to the Diyanet, which sends imams to DITIB mosques, with salaries paid by the Diyanet or local Turk­ish con­sulates. DITIB has embed­ded itself in Euro­pean edu­ca­tion­al sys­tems, with rep­re­sen­ta­tives hold­ing seats on advi­so­ry boards of Islam­ic the­ol­o­gy pro­grams at Ger­man uni­ver­si­ties and coop­er­a­tion between DITIB and state schools. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Diyanet Cen­ter of Amer­i­ca over­sees numer­ous mosques in the Unit­ed States, exem­pli­fy­ing Turkey’s efforts to influ­ence Turk­ish-speak­ing pop­u­la­tions and spread its polit­i­cal Islam agen­da. Iran Inter­na­tion­al notes that the bud­get for con­struc­tion, main­te­nance, and pro­grams of thou­sands of mosques affil­i­at­ed with these cen­ters is pro­vid­ed by the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment, with mis­sion­ar­ies and man­agers sent by the gov­ern­ment receiv­ing gov­ern­ment salaries.

Euro­pean gov­ern­ments have grown increas­ing­ly con­cerned about these oper­a­tions. Ger­many’s domes­tic intel­li­gence ser­vice iden­ti­fied Turk­ish influ­ence oper­a­tions as flanked by attempts to influ­ence com­mu­ni­ties of Turk­ish ori­gin, which can impact polit­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ing process­es in Ger­man soci­ety. Ger­many has cut fund­ing to DITIB and sought to have imams edu­cat­ed local­ly to reduce for­eign influ­ence, while France has closed the Diyanet’s bank accounts and end­ed pro­grams allow­ing oth­er coun­tries to send imams with­out French over­sight. The Mid­dle East Forum reports that in recent years, Turk­ish imams and mosques in Europe have come under inves­ti­ga­tion for espi­onage oper­a­tions tar­get­ing crit­ics and oppo­nents of the Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment, prompt­ing many West­ern Euro­pean coun­tries to imple­ment mea­sures curb­ing for­eign interference.

The reach extends to insti­tu­tion­al coor­di­na­tion across Europe. The head of the Diyanet vis­it­ed Bel­gium and met with politi­cians and NGO lead­ers, includ­ing the head of Bel­gium’s for­mer offi­cial Mus­lim body, as part of a sys­tem­at­ic out­reach to West­ern Euro­pean coun­tries with sig­nif­i­cant Turk­ish com­mu­ni­ties. The Bel­gian Diyanet Foun­da­tion con­trols around 70 mosques in Bel­gium. At the same time, Turk­ish media reports indi­cate the Diyanet held a con­fer­ence in Ger­many to estab­lish a sec­re­tari­at in Ankara that would over­see meet­ings of Euro­pean Mus­lims and orga­nize major gath­er­ings every two years. Aca­d­e­m­ic research from OpenEdi­tion con­firms that dur­ing the 1980s and 1990s, the Diyanet was the main tool of strug­gle against polit­i­cal Islam in Europe. Still, since the 2000s, as the same polit­i­cal Islam monop­o­lized pow­er inside Turkey, Diyanet dis­course reversed, becom­ing the main mega­phone of the rul­ing AKP in Europe as an iden­ti­ty and polit­i­cal tool.

Exter­nal References:
— Nordic Mon­i­tor: Erdo­gan’s noto­ri­ous reli­gious author­i­ty eyes glob­al expan­sion, aim­ing to reach 2.1 mil­lion peo­ple abroad in 2025
— Iran Inter­na­tion­al: Turkey And Iran Use Reli­gion For Influ­ence Build­ing In US And Europe
— OpenEdi­tion: Trans­for­ma­tion of the Turk­ish Diyanet both at Home and Abroad: Three Stages

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