Germany opens investigation into Turkish “Diyanet” accused of spying on Erdogan opponents in 35 countries.

Source quote here.

Germany opens investigation into Turkish “Diyanet” accused of spying on Erdogan opponents in 35 countries.(Independent).

Germany has opened an investigation into a Turkish religious organisation accused of spying on behalf of the government over an attempted coup against Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Prosecutors are reportedly probing Halife Keskin, who heads the foreign relations department of Turkey’s “Diyanet” state religious authority, over allegations imams were asked to gather information on supporters of an exiled cleric.

Investigators have a document appearing to show Keskin personally instructing Turkish missions around the world to spy on alleged members of Fethullah Gulen’s “Hizmet” movement, German media reported.

​Diyanet asked Turkish consulates in 35 countries including Australia, Nigeria, Mauritania and Mongolia to gather information about Gulen supporters, according to leaked documents.

German, Austrian and Swiss authorities have all launched investigations into whether Turkey is conducting illegal espionage on their soil.

Documents made public by an Austrian politician this week alleged that Turkish embassies on four continents had submitted reports on alleged Gulen supporters after receiving a request from Ankara in September.

“There is clearly a global network of informants,” Greens MP Peter Pilz said. 

“We cannot say exactly how long it took to build up this network. I assume that it happened in a matter of years.”

Countries routinely post intelligence officers in their embassies, and European authorities have not said in what ways the alleged Turkish activity went beyond acceptable levels of information-gathering by a foreign power.Read the full story here.

Turkish religious foundation head: Religion of ISIS is religion taught in our theology schools. ISIS are trying to put Islam into practice.

— Ankaralı Jan (@06JAnk) June 23, 2016

Turkey - Diyanet: "Gulen took advantage of interfaith dialogue to build his sinister plots".

Turkey - Diyanet: "Gulen took advantage of interfaith dialogue to build his sinister plots". (Fides).

In the persisting campaign carried out by the Turkish apparatus against the network headed by Fetullah Gulen (Islamic Turkish preacher expatriated in the United States, who was once an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan but today accused by Turkey of being the mind behind the so-called "parallel state" and the instigator of the failed coup of July 15) even the Second Vatican Council and openness to dialogue with the communities and religious traditions that the Catholic Church sanctioned in that Council, are dragged in.

The Presidency of Religious Affairs of Turkey, the institution linked to the office of the Prime Minister, has prepared a dossier on Gulen’s activities and his movement Hizmet, which argues that the so called FETO (Turkish acronym for "tethillahnista terrorist organization" definition with which pro-government Turkish authorities indicate Gulen’s network) exploited interfaith dialogue with Churches and Christian communities, to implement those that are described as sinister plots of power.

"With the interfaith dialogue project based on steps taken by the Vatican II" says the dossier among other things "Gulen, by organizing national and international events, on the one hand wove his ties with Christian culture, and on the other allowed the organization to be accredited in the West. So he was able to establish his base in Pennsylvania, and many Western countries opened their doors to the Organization".

The dossier, which was relaunched recently by Turkish sources consulted by Agenzia Fides, continues along the false lines of long campaigns unleashed by pro-government Turkish press against Fethullah Gulen, building flimsy allegations of conspiracy.

At the beginning of August (see Fides 10/08/2016), journalist Mine Kirikkanat, of the Cumhuriyet newspaper, in an article inspired by the most imaginative conspiracy, recalled the meeting of Fethullah Gulen and John Paul II in February 1998, and insinuated that Fethullah Gulen could be Cardinal created "in pectore" by the Polish Pope who died on April 2, 2005. 

The novelty of the dossier prepared by the Presidency of Religious Affairs is that the connection between the subversive plots attributed to Gulen and interfaith dialogue initiatives are confirmed by an institutional body. The Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Isleri Başkanlığı) is an institution that is part of the Office of the Prime Minister established by article 136 of the Constitution of the Turkish Republic in 1924.

The Diyanet - as it is commonly called - only deals with Sunni Islam and not religious minorities in Turkey: it assigns imams to mosques and draws up the Friday sermons.

Over the last fifteen years, the Diyanet has reach impressive sizes, from 2003 to 2013 budgets and staff have doubled and its scope has widened, providing their collaboration to the programming activities of various ministries.

Agenzia Fides - Palazzo “de Propaganda Fide” - 00120 - Città del Vaticano Tel. +39-06-69880115 - Fax +39-06-69880107

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Turkey’s Erdoğan promises private jet to top cleric, claims falsely that Pope has own plane.

Source

Turkey’s Erdoğan promises private jet to top cleric, claims falsely that Pope has own plane. (Bugun).

Turkish 'Islamist' President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that he would request the ruling government to provide a private jet to the head of Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs, Mehmet Görmez, in defiance of criticism caused by his earlier promise to give a Mercedes to the cleric.

In an interview with NTV television channel on Tuesday, Erdoğan said that Mehmet Görmez was a respected Islamic religious leader who deserved the same conveniences as the pope.

Stating that the pope had a private jet, cars and armored vehicles, Erdoğan asked, “the situation at the Vatican is like that, and our religious leader should take scheduled flights?”

Controversy begun when the Hürriyet daily claimed in December of last year that a Mercedes S500 was bought for around TRY 1 million for Görmez's office out of the budget of the Religious Affairs Directorate Foundation (Türk Diyanet Vakfı). In a step that appears to have been taken due to strong public criticism Görmez said that he would return the car.

However, Erdoğan recently announced that his office decided to give a new armored car following the controversy over the previously purchased TRY 1 million car.

Opposing the returning the original car despite an angry reaction from the public, Erdoğan announced during a televised interview aired on one of the pro-government TV channels that one of the armored cars serving the presidency would be given to Görmez, again to much criticism. Hmmmm.....The Pope is also the head of State of the Vatican,....... 'Empty barrels make the most noise'

Erdogan says Presidency allocated new armored car for top Diyanet imam ‘as gesture’

Religion gives you wings?

Erdogan says Presidency allocated new armored car for top Diyanet imam ‘as gesture’. (TZ).

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced that his office decided to give Religious Affairs Directorate President Mehmet Görmez a new armored car as a gesture following a controversy over a previously purchased TL 1 million car for the top imam.

The president, who became personally involved in the controversy by opposing Görmez returning the car in the face of public reaction, announced during an interview aired on a pro-government channel on Thursday that one of the armored cars serving the Presidency will be given to Görmez.

“We, the office of the president, decided to do this -- giving something which befits the post of the Religious Affairs Directorate president -- as a gesture following the rudeness against our Religious Affairs Directorate president,” Erdoğan said. The car initially purchased for Görmez was not armored.

In separate remarks, Erdoğan said that most of those "who are putting forward this slander" are using Mercedes vehicles. "What is so wrong with our grand Religious Affairs Directorate president using such a car for his official duties?” Erdoğan had said in a rally in the eastern province of Van. Hmmmm.....Matthew 6:24 - “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Compare to the car the Pope was using in 'Islamist' Turkey!

Related:   The Diyanet: Turkey's 'Islamist state' within.

  Video - Top 'Islamist' Turkish Diyanet Cleric Mehmet Gormez: 'We Should Not Accept Jerusalem As the Capital of Anyone but the Muslims'

Couldn't resist; suits perfect saga of Religious directorate's return of Mercedes+Erdogan's insisting he keep it. pic.twitter.com/kIkZl5tvJA

— Louis Fishman (@Istanbultelaviv) May 22, 2015

@Istanbultelaviv pic.twitter.com/VVFEGE1mxp

— Piero Castellano (@PieroCastellano) May 22, 2015

Video - Top 'Islamist' Turkish Diyanet Cleric Mehmet Gormez: 'We Should Not Accept Jerusalem As the Capital of Anyone but the Muslims'

Video - Top 'Islamist' Turkish Cleric Mehmet Gormez: 'We Should Not Accept Jerusalem As the Capital of Anyone but the Muslims'. HT : MEMRI.


In a sermon delivered at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on May 15 and posted on the Internet, Mehmet Gormez, President of the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs, said: "We should not accept that Jerusalem be the capital of anyone else. It is the capital city of the Muslims. We ask Allah to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the aggressors."

The Diyanet: Turkey's 'Islamist state' within.

Source Quote.

The Diyanet: Turkey's 'Islamist state' within. (FA).

A year after founding modern Turkey in 1923, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate and created a government directorate of religious affairs, or the Diyanet.

Through the management of mosques and religious education, the new body would make Islam subservient to the state to secure the republic’s ostensibly secular identity.

Today, the Diyanet has largely been turned on its head. In the lead-up to June parliamentary elections, Western news outlets have fretted about Erdogan’s crackdown on free speech and his broader authoritarian drift. Meanwhile, his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), in power since 2002, has wielded a beefed-up Diyanet to promote a conservative lifestyle at home and, increasingly, to project Turkish Islam abroad.

Since 2006, the Diyanet’s budget has leapt fourfold, to 5.4 billion lira (just over $2 billion). Its share of government spending has increased by about a third and its staff has doubled, to nearly 150,000. It budget allocation this year is 40 percent more than the Ministry of the Interior’s and equal to those of the Foreign, Energy, and Culture and Tourism ministries combined.

Recent Diyanet-issued fatwas have condemned as haram the celebration of the Gregorian New Year, playing the lottery, tattoos, and abortions.

It is impossible to say whether the Diyanet issues these at AKP’s request, but the measures do jibe with AKP social policy. Further, the AKP seems to have little compunction about using the Diyanet for political ends. At Erdogan’s behest, the directorate is building a massive mosque on top of a hill overlooking the Bosporus in Istanbul. And after the government briefly shut down Twitter last year, the Diyanet’s Friday sermon reminded Turks that “freedom requires responsibility,” which many interpreted as a religious stamp of approval on the ban.

Just last week, Davutoglu said that Turkish Islam could be “an antidote” to the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) and that he had assigned the Diyanet the “mission” to battle the Middle East’s sectarian conflicts.

Today the Turkish-Islamic Union of Religious Affairs (DITIB) is one of Germany’s most influential Muslim organizations. The Diyanet’s French arm, established in 2003, now ranks among the country’s most prominent Muslim groups, even though Turkish-origin Muslims represent just 8­–10 percent of France’s seven million Muslims. In the Netherlands, the Diyanet pays the salaries of the Dutch Islamic Foundation, which oversees some 140 mosques. It also maintains a sizable Belgian arm.

It publishes Diyanet Avrupa, a slick monthly magazine on its work in Europe. Perhaps most important, it has helped build and rebuild dozens of Balkan mosques. “Turkey is now the most influential Muslim country in the [Balkan] region,” Oktem writes.

And on a recent visit to Mecca, the Diyanet head Mehmet Gormez announced plans for an Islamic university in Istanbul, arguing that highly regarded institutions such as al-Azhar University in Cairo and Saudi Arabia’s Medina Islamic University had failed to stem the conflict and violence vexing the Muslim world.

The new university is expected to open next year, with instruction in Turkish, Arabic, and English. Ankara expects it to burnish the country’s bona fides in Islamic theology. In 2013, the Diyanet published a seven-volume modern-day reinterpretation of the hadith, a collection of thousands of reported sayings from the Prophet Muhammad that, as the second most sacred text in Islam, largely dictate Islamic law.

Until recently, the Diyanet’s expanded scope and ambition had met with little complaint within Turkey, mainly because Turkish law stipulates that a political party that questions whether the Diyanet should exist can be dissolved. In 2013, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, in charge of religious affairs at the time, said that those who complain that the Diyanet’s budget is too high are “against the presence of the institution itself.”

Citing the AKP’s coziness with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, an article at the Clarion Project said the Maryland mosque is “the next step in Erdogan’s desire to increase the Islamist influence in America.”

But it could have the opposite effect. A January study by Bertelsmann Stiftung found that 46 percent of the population of North Rhine–Westphalia, home to a third of Germany’s Muslims and many Diyanet-run mosques, view Islam as a threat. In Saxony, which has a tiny Muslim population, 70 percent do. Hmmmmm........Erdogan: "Thank God i'm a servant of Sharia". Read the full story here.


 Related: 'Islamist' Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs budget alone is greater than those of 10 ministries put together.

'Lets first clean up Islam before going after 'Islamophobia' - head of Turkish Diyanet.

'Lets first clean up Islam before going after 'Islamophobia' - head of Turkish Diyanet. (HD).

An Islamic world that does not put out the fire in its own home cannot fight against Islamophobia:" head of Turkish Diyanet.

The brutal murders of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have prompted Islamic-style reactions - including execution of its members and calls for more violence against the jihadists.

Jordan executed Sajida al-Rishawi and Ziad al-Karbouly, two Iraqis with links to al-Qaeda, early yesterday in response to a video released by the ISIL jihadist murderers, which showed captured Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kaseasbeh being burned alive in a cage.

This is a typical application of the “qisas” method, which has its place in Islam. The 178th verse of the Surat al-Baqarah, the longest chapter of Islam’s holy book the Quran reads as follows: “O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you in the matter of the murdered; the freeman for the freeman, and the slave for the slave, and the female for the female.”

Cairo’s Al-Azhar, one of Sunni Islam’s most prestigious centers of learning, expressed outrage yesterday, saying ISIL militants deserve to be killed or crucified.

Its head, Ahmed al-Tayib, suggested that such punishments were ordered by Islam, though burning is definitely out of question.

“Islam forbids the killing of the innocent human soul ... It forbids mutilating the human soul by burning or in any other way, even during wars against an enemy that attacks you. This requires the punishment mentioned in the Quran for these corrupt oppressors who fight against God and his prophet: Killing, crucifixion or chopping of the limbs,” al-Tayib was quoted as saying by AFP.

So the solution that the Islamic authorities and states came up with against violent murders committed by ISIL in the name of Islam is more violence.

If the Muslim world continues to use the “this is not real Islam” rhetoric for the actions of ISIL and other jihadist groups, they will have to come up with a better response than more violence to fight violence.

The “real Islam” defense, by the way, is not a strong one. With so many different sects, orders, groups who consider themselves as the followers of the real deal, the “real Islam” is a mystery that is unlikely to be solved.

A recent survey in Turkey yielded very interesting results on this issue. According to the survey, conducted by research company Metropoll, 58 percent of respondents said today’s Muslims “do not represent the real Islam,” while only 33 percent said they did. A religion that cannot be represented by its own followers: This is the point to which Islam has come, thanks to the violence and atrocities committed in its name.

Mehmet Görmez, the head of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet), highlighted yesterday the need for Muslims to put their house in order before going after Islamophobia.

“An Islamic world that does not put out the fire in its own home cannot fight against Islamophobia,” Görmez said, in a rare occasion of self-criticism instead of blaming the West.

“An Islamic world that has not turned its own soil to a land of belief, a land of peace, a land of freedom, cannot fight hostility against Islam in other worlds. The Islamic world should put out the fire of sedition at home before everything else, in order to be able to set right the accusations against Islam,” he added.

Muslims and the countries of the Middle East must leave their traditions behind and renounce violence and killings, regardless of its source. They must find a tool other than violence to fight those who they disagree with.

Until then, their complaint that “Islam cannot be associated with violence” will continue to go unheard. Hmmmm........'And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?' Matthew 7:3 . Read the full story here.