German Islamic Umbrella Group Elects Deputy Chairwoman Who Leads Turkish Far-Right Organization

The Zen­tral­rat der Mus­lime in Deutsch­land (Cen­tral Coun­cil of Mus­lims in Ger­many) has issued a press state­ment announc­ing the elec­tion of a deputy chair­woman who is also a leader Turk­ish far-right group. Accord­ing to the press release:

Sep­tem­ber 19,  2022, On Sun­day (18.09.2022), the Cen­tral Coun­cil of Mus­lims in Ger­many (ZMD) met for its reg­u­lar ple­nary ses­sion in Cologne. Aiman Mazyek was elect­ed for a sec­ond time with an absolute major­i­ty. (…) New in the board is the deputy chair­woman Mrs. Özlem Başöz. (Trans­lat­ed using deepl.com).

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The Union of Turk­ish-Islam­ic Cul­tur­al Asso­ci­a­tions in Europe (Turk­ish: Avru­pa Türk-İsl­am Bir­liği; Atib) iden­ti­fies Başöz as its sec­re­tary gen­er­al, and Atib is con­sid­ered a right-wing extrem­ist asso­ci­a­tion by the Ger­man domes­tic intel­li­gence agency. Accord­ing to the agen­cy’s 2021 report, Atib has 1200 mem­bers and rep­re­sents a more Islam­i­cal­ly-ori­ent­ed part of the far-right “Ülkücü” move­ment, also known as the Grey Wolves. Ger­man media has report­ed that mosques asso­ci­at­ed with Atib employ imams sent by Turkey’s top reli­gious author­i­ty, Diyanet.

The Cen­tral Coun­cil of Mus­lims in Ger­many (Zen­tral­rat der Mus­lime in Deutsch­land; ZMD) is an Islam­ic umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion with mem­ber asso­ci­a­tions mon­i­tored by the Ger­man domes­tic intel­li­gence agency. Although the Ger­man Fed­er­al Agency for Civic Edu­ca­tion esti­mates that the ZMD rep­re­sents less than one per­cent of all Ger­man Mus­lims direct­ly, it is regard­ed as the gov­ern­men­t’s lead­ing dia­logue part­ner for soci­etal issues about Islam and the local Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty. One of ZMD’s found­ing mem­bers until its 2019 sus­pen­sion was the Deutsche Mus­lim­is­che Gemein­schaft (DMG), rep­re­sent­ing the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) in Germany.