It is actually no secret that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan comes from Islamist circles. A new document by the German government now confirms that the Turkish President has intensified his relations with those groups in recent years.
The German government has accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his party of maintaining close ties to Islamists. This is based on a response from the federal government to a request by German MP Sevim Dağdelen (Die Linke). It revealed that there is increasing open contact between the Erdoğan camp and the Islamist “Milli Görüş” movement (IGMG), which is under observation by the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution and belongs to the spectrum of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In its response to Dağdelen’s question, the German government emphasizes that the Turkish head of state, who recently caused a rhetorical escalation with France, has “his ideological and political roots” in this movement. After a period of distancing himself from his roots, contacts in this scene increased after the failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016.
As examples of these contacts, the Federal Government mentions the closeness between representatives of the IGMG and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Turkish religious authority Diyanet and its German branch DITIB. These organizations held events together, the answer said.
The Turkish state continues to exert influence on communities of Turkish origin in Germany and to selectively influence the political will-making and decision-making process in German society as a whole,” states the Federal Government.
Dağdelen explained: „It is to be welcomed that the German government is seeing Erdoğan’s ideological and political roots in the anti-democratic Muslim Brotherhood for the first time and naming this in a highly official manner.“
The “Islamist-nationalist Erdoğan network” is a threat to public security in Germany. It must be “broken up instead of state subsidized”. She was referring to the state funding of DITIB mosques by some federal states.
