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."
Erbas also said, "It is necessary to mobilize the ummah in all forms of jihad in the way of Allah."
The International Union of Muslim Scholars was founded by the chief ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood. Also present at the meeting was Hamas official Marwan Abou Ras. DITIB is subordinate to Diyanet, and is also financially dependent on it. DITIB has around 1,000 mosques in Germany, and is sometimes called the 'long arm of Erdogan.'
Following news of the meeting, a spokesman for the German Federal Ministry of the Interior told newspaper WELT: "The events show once again how problematic the structural and personnel connection of Ditib to the Turkish religious authority is."
"The basic prerequisites for cooperation with Ditib are a clear commitment to the value system of the Basic Law, to international understanding, to Israel's right to exist, and an equally clear commitment against Islamism and antisemitism."
“Diyanet President Ali Erbas made his appeal in the context of Hamas and thus also in the context of the Muslim Brotherhood," terrorism expert Nicolas Stockhammer told Euronews. "One should not underestimate the fact that the connection between the Muslim Brotherhood is becoming ever closer."
German government long supported DITIB in training imams
For many years, the German government has supported DITIB in its training of Muslim imams, but since 2023 has forbidden DITIB from sending imams to be trained by Diyanet in Turkey. Now, as part of an initiative by the Interior Ministry, Turkish imams are instead being trained in Germany, at the expense (465,000 euros since March 1, 2025) of the German government.
"In contrast to seconded Diyanet imams, who return to Turkey after four years and have their centre of life in Turkey and in Diyanet, the imams recruited by DITIB are to carry out their service permanently in the DITIB communities in Germany and have no connection to Turkish government offices under official law," the ministry said. "Integration measures can therefore have a more lasting effect than would be the case with Diyanet imams."
Stockhammer told Euronews that “We definitely cannot rule out the possibility that the spiral of radicalization will continue and that terrorist violence will emerge and be carried out from this circle of DITIB associations in Germany or elsewhere in Europe.”
"Many of these mosques could ultimately be instrumentalized by Diyanet to preach even more radical content here, also to push younger people into the radical sphere," he added. "The DITIB mosques could become more and more close to the Muslim Brotherhood through a Diyanet patron of Erbas's ilk. Actors of political Islam are striving to come to power legally at some point and to enforce Sharia law. And when Erbas speaks of 'jihad in all its forms', he will most likely mean violence."
DITIB has been involved in several scandals in the past.
According to a ZDF report (the German public-service television broadcaster), at least nineteen DITIB imams conducted espionage against targets in Germany on behalf of Turkey. The Ministry of the Interior went on to say 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 (MIT) a large number of potential informers and whistleblowers".
In 2022, a DITIB Hamburg imam praised a founder of Hamas.
According to Euronews, a chairman of the DITIB mosque in Bielefeld posed at the grave of the right-wing extremist founder of the Grey Wolves group.