Despite the investigations against Religious Affairs Turkish-Islamic Union (Diyanet İşleri Türk- İslam Birliği -DITIB) last year, the Merkel-led federal government continued their relationship to the Turkish religious affairs institute that is known to work as a branch of the Erdoğan regime without a hitch.

Similarly, financial support for the DITIB, which was cited in the 2017 report by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution released last month as under surveillance, continues as in previous years.

New information on DITIB has surfaced in the response to the written inquiry submitted by far right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), who are the opposition to the Christian Democrats/Social Democrats government in the Federal Parliament, about the financial support provided to immigrant institutions. DITIB has received a total of 724.911 Euros in support in 2017.

ERDOĞAN’S PROPAGANDA IN GERMANY WAS FREE

The support given to DITIB, working under the Turkish religious affairs directorate with close to 900 mosques in Germany, is almost as much as the Council of Muslims, which aims to represent all Muslim peoples in the country: The Council of Muslims received 914.000 Euros in support the same year.

The Merkel government has also allocated a large budget to the DITIB in 2018 like in 2017. Various federal ministries have provided at least 6 million Euros in financial support since 2012.

DITIB claimed to carry out “harmony projects” with this money, and what kind of activities the DITIB holds in mosques, associations and schools has been on the public agenda in Germany for a long time. It had been published in the media with documents in early 2017 when the Merkel government and the Erdoğan regime had a falling out how the DITIB issued Erdoğan propaganda in mosques under the guise of sermons and how they forced children to espionage in religious classes.

DITIB MOSQUES RECITE THE “FETIH (CONQUEST) VERSE”

The federal prosecutor’s office has made no advances in the investigation launched against some imams from the DITIB by early 2017, and actually announced that the case was closed last December. The investigation was about 19 DITIB officers.

Earlier this year, it came to light that the Turkish state had sent orders to the DITIB, like they do to the religious affairs directorate in Turkey. The Religious Services Attache Fuat Candir stationed in the Turkish Embassy in Berlin had written, “Pray for our soldiers for victory” in his social media accounts.

German politicians from the Federal government demanded that war propaganda not be allowed in mosques, while events in a DITIB mosque in the Herford province of the NRW state had reminded people of Nazi Germany’s Hitler Jugend (Youth).

In an event they organized, the DITIB put children aged 4 to 7 in military uniforms and gave them toy weapons, as the children were made to chant racist anthems. DITIB then published footage from the event on their social media, as if what they did was a good thing. When the images garnered harsh criticism from German politicians, the videos were taken down.