Istanbul MP slams German raids on Turkish imams' homes

By Mesut Zeyrek

COLOGNE, Germany (AA) - Police raids on the houses of four imams suspected of spying for the Turkish government in Germany is unacceptable, the head of the Turkish parliament’s Human Rights Commission said Thursday.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Mustafa Yeneroglu said the police operations were politically motivated.

The Istanbul MP said the raids on the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), an organization controlled by Ankara that manages some 900 mosques or religious communities in Germany, were not new but added they had recently increased.

"The main purpose is to cut the ties of DITIB with Turkey, and transform it into a fragmented and weak association. I am really concerned about the future of the Turkish community there," he added.

German police Wednesday searched the apartments of four Turkish imams as part of an investigation into alleged intelligence-gathering activities.

The Federal Prosecutor's Office said in a statement that the imams were suspected of being “engaged in intelligence activity” for a foreign secret service, by gathering information on members of the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), the group responsible for last July’s defeated coup in Turkey according to Ankara.

The searches of the imams’ apartments in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate were carried out to find evidence supporting the claims, the statement said.

The office opened an investigation last month following media reports claiming several imams working at mosques of the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs had gathered information on FETO members and their institutions in Germany, and reported them to Turkey’s state Religious Affairs Directorate, or Diyanet.

The DITIB, also the largest union of Germany’s Turkish community, has strongly denied any involvement in espionage, and said a number of imams had apparently misinterpreted a request by the Diyanet and sent information to Ankara.

DITIB's secretary-general, Bekir Alboga, said Wednesday that the searches at the imams’ apartments were not "intended for any DITIB employees".

Speaking to the reporters in Cologne, Alboga said the investigation targeted "a few individuals who have illegally gathered intelligence and reported it".

He said they would not tolerate any unlawful acts in their institutions, adding they would continue to cooperate on projects with stakeholders in "churches, politics, media, and state".