German Turkish Muslims between Turkish and German political demands!

“DITIP was founded with the aim of restoring the inclination of Turkish communities towards Turkey through the Islam of a Kemalist-oriented state, named after secular President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.” According to Karam Oktum, a lecturer at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.

With the aim of removing the Milli Goros movement, which was considered in Turkey to be anti-state. Under the AKP, the gap between state Islam and political Islam movements has narrowed; there was no convergence between DITIP and Milli Goros in the past. Today, the relationship is much more open, with DITIP organizing large celebrations such as the Prophet’s Birthday; all other Turkish Muslim organizations are calling for them. ^[1]

The German government’s confidence in DITIP and its need for it stemmed from the desire to promote a moderate Islam away from extremism, which was represented by the Diyanet Foundation in Ankara, which defended a moderate interpretation of Islam and was appreciated by the majority of the Turkish people, before changing its conservative way of working, especially under Erdogan, who allocated an annual budget for it exceeding one billion euros, according to informed sources higher than the budget of the Ministry of Interior.

After Erdogan’s victory in the last elections, and in the wake of the failed coup in 2016, Turkish policy towards expatriates took a more strict turn, before that it was possible to observe some independence in the movements of “DITIP”, there is an entire generation was grown under German culture, and it was not useful for Ankara to close the doors to them completely , and there was a part of the mosques groups more linked to the popular level in Germany.

Berlin’s Sehtlik Camii mosque, for example, was the subject of a cautious experiment, with the mosque’s young imam, Ander Setien, a native of Neuköln of Turkish origin, opening the house of worship to non-Muslim visitors with open seminars on Saturdays and beginning a public dialogue with Jewish rabbis and Christian pastors, which integrationists saw as an ideal initiative to reduce the overlapping gap between German Muslims and other Germans.

Setien was among a new generation of Muslim clerics who sought to bring the Turkish Muslim community into Germany. They have already reached out to the German media, they have worked in German public schools to teach religious classes to Muslim students, and some have even touched on highly sensitive topics such as homosexuality.

But this open religious façade came to an abrupt after the failed coup attempt in Turkey, leading to a campaign through Turkey that reached Germany. Setien and his allies found themselves facing the wrath of the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs, which suspended Sehtlik Camii’s board of directors entirely and accused them of following Fethullah Gulen, an exiled politician whom Erdogan blamed for the coup.

The changing role of religions and the Turkish Islamic Union for Religious Affairs came under harsh scrutiny in the coup attempt, and not only were reformist imams overthrown but pro-Erdogan preachers were even caught red-handed by German intelligence services and presented lists of suspected Gülenists to Turkish authorities. ^[2]

The German newspaper “Der Spiegel” saw that these reports prove the extent of Erdogan’s influence in German society, that one of his goals is to divide Turkish society abroad into allies and enemies of the regime, and that President Erdogan uses the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs as an important part of the network to control expatriate Turks for his own goals.

The German political and media accusations against “DITP” escalated and evolved from accusing the Union of submitting to Turkish government policy, to the German government’s announcement of freezing its financial support, worth one million euros, for three social projects in which the Turkish Union contributes, including two projects to prevent youth from extremism and violence and relief for refugees.

German media revealed at the end of September 2018 that the German intelligence service was putting DITIP under surveillance. Hesse also froze its cooperation with the federation in teaching Islamic education in state schools, while the government of Lower Saxony froze a project involving the DITIP for the official recognition of Islam in the state.

The German Interior Ministry began to take measures in order for the Turkish Islamic Union to be independent of Turkey, and the former adviser to the German Interior Ministry, “Markus Kerber,” stressed that Muslims of Turkish origin residing in Germany must develop their standards and values according to the lifestyle they lead, as well as the upbringing of their clerics themselves, saying: “This matter may not appeal to Ankara, and may make problems, but we will resist that.” Referring to the Turkish Islamic Union of the Turkish Religious Affairs Authority. “We stood by and watched the recommendations of foreign powers to Muslims in Germany and how they live.” Kerber said

The conflict over religious education in Germany between Turkey and Germany!

Today, “Diyanat” is trying to monopolize the teaching of Islamic jurisprudence in Germany, and it does not want to appoint professors of jurisprudence without cooperating with the religious administration without cooperating with it. Diyanat see that there is a danger that the influence of Islam will increase in Germany, because it reduces the observance of the Turkish element. This is not in the interest of a Turkish state organization; it wants to give citizens the feeling of being Turkish as well. ^[3]

During Erdogan’s recent visit to Germany, it became clear that DITIP has been no longer a model partner in integration issues, as he opened the Central Mosque in Cologne There it became clear how Erdogan and the Turkish Islamic Union became isolated in Germany, as the Prime Minister of North Rhine, Armin Laschet, who received Erdogan upon his arrival at the airport, did not attend the opening ceremony, in which neither the mayor of Cologne nor any political representative of the city participated. The Turkish Islamic Union for Religious Affairs has formed a committee made up of prominent figures in the city and politicians supporting the mosque.

Not only politicians, but religious leaders in the Catholic city of Cologne decided to stay away from the mosque’s opening ceremony, and other social organizations also boycotted the opening ceremony.

“Milli Görüs” and the experience of political Islam

The Islamic Assembly (Milli GörüS e.V.) was founded in Cologne, Germany in 1986 by the union of several Turkish Islamic associations and federations. It controls and manages 300 mosques, associations and Islamic women’s and youth unions. It has 27,000 members, and the group is accused by the German Constitutional Protection Service of seeking to implement the “Islamic law” system in Germany, and with clear links with the MB in Egypt and with Islamist parties in Turkey.

Since Mehmet Sabri Erbakan, nephew of former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, assumed the presidency of the assembly in 2001, there has been a clear attempt to interfere in the life of Muslim communities in Germany, and push them towards political action from the MB point of view.

“I have documented information which I have seen with the Department for the Protection of the Constitution, according to which the new orientation of the organization under Erbakan’s presidency is to push Muslims to obtain German citizenship, not for the purpose of integration, but with the aim of establishing an Islamic party in the end, aimed at Islamizing Germany and applying Islamic law in it,” researcher Udo Olfkote says.

There is also talk of the grouping’s ties to Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) since 2002. The group publishes a proselytizing magazine called Mili Gazete, which calls on Muslims and supporters of the association to obtain German citizenship to participate in political life and to activate the ideas defended by the group.

The German Constitution Protection Service monitors the gathering, it says more than 300,000 Muslims living in the EU visit the mosques and associations run by the group annually. The German authorities consider this gathering one of the largest Islamic organizations working in the German arena, which works to spread political Islam among Muslim communities in order to achieve political and ideological goals.

The Union of European Turkish Democrats (UTED) is classified among the civil society organizations in EU, and its located in the city of Cologne in western Germany, and it was opened in 2005 by the then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and has branches in a number of European countries. The Federation has offices in various European countries and is concentrated in Germany, where it alone has 46 branches. He acts as a representative of the Turkish president and his party, mobilizes voters for him and organizes visits to the leaders of the “Justice and Development” and the government. ^[4]

Conclusion

At a time when the German government wants Turkish Muslims to be German citizens, the Turkish government insists on making their loyalty first to Erdogan’s Turkey, to use them politically for the interests of their country of origin, and this is what bothers the German government a lot.

If this seems natural to the German government, it seems neither possible nor desirable for the Turkish government, which wants to put the loyalty of German Turks to Turkey first, and to Erdogan’s Islamist project, and this is one of the most German fear of Erdogan’s influence over those Islamic organizations that are affiliated in one way or another with Turkey.

The spirituality and morality of religion are victims of political interests between the two parties, so when will politics stop using religion?