9 out of 10 people in Germany remembers country’s largest Islamic body DITIB by its spying scandal. But in truth, there was no scandal. There were allegations made by German authorities which were dropped due to lack of evidence. To put it in a simple sentence: The Turkish Islamic group was subjected to slander of German authorities. Or to put it more mildly; The allegations were baseless. But the damage was done.
Looking at what happened in the past, almost no one will ever remember the fact that DITIB was smeared and its Imams had nothing to do with spying. However, Every time German media published a piece about DITIB, the baseless allegations were repeated over and over without mentioning the fact that the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. So when one reads a news on Deutsche Welle for example about DITIB, he/she would never know that DITIB was actually cleared of baseless accusations.
More than a year later, Germany’s scandal-ridden domestic agency BFV announced at the end of September that it was mulling to monitor DITIB for violating the constitution. The announcement came one week before Turkish president Erdogan’s visit to Cologne to inaugurate DITIB’s central mosque at its headquarters. The Turkish Islamic body which operates more than 900 mosques through out Germany had already been under immense pressure of German state. This latest move, however, could mean shutting down the institution. DITIB preferred to remain silent but the whole Turkish community knew this was just German government’s tactic to bring the muslim organization under total control by creating climate of fear right before Erdogan’s visit.
And that just turned out to be the case. According to German media, the German domestic intelligence agency decided that it will not place DITIB under surveillance as there were not enough findings for such step. However, no one will remember that BFV actually could not find enough evidence for monitoring or there was no such evidence at all. The incident inscribed on everyone’s mind as “DITIB being monitored for violating the constitution.” The damage is long done. And perhaps that was the main aim of the German state.
Diaspora Daily 