Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB)

Turk­ish-Islam­ic Union for Reli­gious Affairs (DİTİB) is Germany’s largest Turk­ish-Mus­lim umbrel­la asso­ci­a­tion, found­ed in 1984 in Cologne and insti­tu­tion­al­ly linked to Turkey’s Pres­i­den­cy of Reli­gious Affairs (Diyanet). It coor­di­nates reli­gious ser­vices for rough­ly nine hun­dred mosque com­mu­ni­ties nation­wide, long rely­ing on Diyanet-trained imams assigned from Turkey while pre­sent­ing itself as a cul­tur­al and inte­gra­tion part­ner in Ger­many. DİTİB has faced scruti­ny over Ankara’s influence—most notably the 2017 “spy­ing imams” affair that trig­gered police raids and polit­i­cal pres­sure for reforms—yet it remains a cen­tral actor in Ger­man Mus­lim life. In recent years, author­i­ties and DİTİB have moved toward domes­ti­cal­ly train­ing Ger­man-based, Ger­man-speak­ing imams to reduce for­eign depen­dence, reflect­ing an ongo­ing recal­i­bra­tion of the organization’s role between dias­po­ra ser­vice and state-to-state reli­gious diplomacy.

References

• DİTİB — Offi­cial Website
• Ger­many raids apart­ments of four Turk­ish imams sus­pect­ed of spy­ing (Reuters, 2017)
• Spi­onagever­dacht gegen Imame bei DİTİB (Ger­man Bun­destag, 2017)
• An Assess­ment of DİTİB’s Role in the Pre­ven­tion of Vio­lent Rad­i­cal­iza­tion (SWP/CATS, 2020)
• Turkey will no longer send imams to Ger­man mosques (Reuters, 2023)
• Ger­many and Turkey agree to train imams in Ger­many (AP, 2023)