(Ahval) The former chief of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) said Turkish imams with the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), one of Germany’s largest Islamic organisations, are working for Turkish intelligence.
“They were known to be engaged in intelligence activity and to send the information they gathered to Turkish authorities,” Hans-Georg Maasen told German news outlet Focus Online.
Set up in 1984 as a branch of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), DITIB funds around 900 mosques in Germany and boasts a membership of around 800,000. While DITIB says it is not officially linked to the Turkish state, it has in the past been accused of spying for Turkey on German citizens, resulting in a temporary suspension of federal funding in 2017.
