Turkish Diplomat Becomes New Rector of Turkish-German University, University May Train Future Imams

A for­mer Turk­ish diplo­mat has been appoint­ed rec­tor of the Turk­ish-Ger­man Uni­ver­si­ty (Ger­man: Türkisch-Deutsche Uni­ver­sität) in Istan­bul. Accord­ing to the university’s website:

By Deci­sion 2022/230 pub­lished in the Offi­cial Gazette on June 3, 2022 under num­ber 31855, Prof. Dr. Cemal Yıldız, Direc­tor Gen­er­al of High­er Edu­ca­tion and Edu­ca­tion Abroad of the Min­istry of Nation­al Edu­ca­tion, was appoint­ed Rec­tor of the Turk­ish-Ger­man Uni­ver­si­ty in accor­dance with Arti­cle 13 of High­er Edu­ca­tion Law No. 2547 and Arti­cles 2, 3 and 7 of Pres­i­den­tial Decree No. 3. Prof. Dr. Halil Akkanat, who served as Act­ing Rec­tor from 2012 to 2014 and Rec­tor of TAU from 2014 to 2022, hand­ed over the office to Prof. Dr. Cemal Yıldız on Wednes­day, June 8, 2022, at the Rec­torate Build­ing. (Trans­lat­ed from German.)

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The web­site says Cemal Yildiz served as Direc­tor Gen­er­al for High­er Edu­ca­tion and Edu­ca­tion Abroad at the Turk­ish Embassy in Berlin since August 2021 before work­ing as an Edu­ca­tion Advi­sor at the Embassy.

The Turk­ish-Ger­man Uni­ver­si­ty was found­ed in 2010 as a joint ven­ture of the Ger­man and Turk­ish gov­ern­ments. It is financed by both states, with Ger­many invest­ing 28 mil­lion euros between 2009 and 2020. A Ger­man polit­i­cal sci­en­tist the uni­ver­si­ty as a “politi­cized lob­by­ing insti­tu­tion of the Erdo­gan regime,” and the uni­ver­si­ty has recent­ly been scru­ti­nized in Ger­man media. In Feb­ru­ary 2021, a lec­tur­er at the Fac­ul­ty of Eco­nom­ics and Man­age­ment Sci­ences was report­ed to have made homo­pho­bic and racist tweets, and In May 2021, the uni­ver­si­ty announced an inves­ti­ga­tion against anoth­er employ­ee after he crit­i­cized Turk­ish pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Ger­man media is also report­ing on poten­tial plans to estab­lish an imam train­ing fac­ul­ty at the Turk­ish-Ger­man Uni­ver­si­ty in coop­er­a­tion with the Turk­ish Direc­torate of Reli­gious Affairs (Diyanet). How­ev­er, Ger­many is seek­ing to have imams edu­cat­ed in Ger­many to reduce the num­ber of for­eign imams and curb the influ­ence of the Diyanet. Through orga­ni­za­tions such as the Turk­ish-Islam­ic Union for Reli­gious Affairs  (DITIB), the Diyanet pro­vides and pays imams for Turk­ish mosques abroad. DITIB rejects sup­port for Ger­man efforts to train imams at Ger­man uni­ver­si­ties, accord­ing to a recent Ger­man domes­tic intel­li­gence report.