UPDATE - Istanbul MP slams German raids on Turkish imams' homes

ADDS STATEMENT FROM TURKISH JUSTICE MINISTER

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

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

The Istanbul lawmaker 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 had recently increased.

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

On Thursday, Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag described the allegations as "slander".

"There is no doubt that unfair, unfounded and arbitrary practices and inquiries into Turkish religious officials will harm relations between the two countries," Bozdag said.

The minister said Germany too easily believed allegations made by terror organizations and terrorists working against Turkey.

"We condemn the raids on the houses of imams and invite the German authorities to terminate this unfair and arbitrary practice which violates human rights and freedoms," Bozdag said.

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

The German Federal Prosecutor's Office said in a statement 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) terror organization, 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, which is 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 on Wednesday the searches at the imams’ apartments were not "intended for any DITIB employees".

Speaking to 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 the state".