Turkey Strengthens Ties To Turkish Islamist Group In Germany

Ger­man media is report­ing that the Ger­man gov­ern­ment is assert­ing that Turkey’s gov­ern­ing Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP) has inten­si­fied its rela­tions with Mil­lî Görüş in Ger­many. Accord­ing to a Deutsche Welle (DW) report:

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment respond­ed to a par­lia­men­tary ques­tion regard­ing the con­nec­tion between Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan and Mil­li Görüs. Mil­li Görüs, which is mon­i­tored by the Ger­man inter­nal intel­li­gence agency, the Orga­ni­za­tion for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion, is also asso­ci­at­ed with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood organization. […]

In the response of the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, it was point­ed out that Erdo­gan’s ide­o­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal roots extend to the Mil­li Görüs move­ment, and after the estab­lish­ment of the AKP, Mil­li Gorus saw Erdo­gan as a “trai­tor”. The con­nec­tions were weak for a long time, but the con­tact became inten­si­fied espe­cial­ly after the coup attempt in 2016. [Google Translation]

Read the rest here.

The Turk­ish Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP) is the cur­rent rul­ing par­ty in Turkey led by Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The par­ty was found­ed in 2001 by a num­ber of politi­cians from Islamist polit­i­cal par­ties that were banned for vio­lat­ing Turkey’s sec­u­lar order, pro­claim­ing them­selves as prac­tic­ing “con­ser­v­a­tive democ­ra­cy” and reject­ing the Islamist label. The par­ty nar­row­ly sur­vived an attempt to close it via the courts for vio­lat­ing Turkey’s sec­u­lar­ism laws for its lift­ing of a ban on head­scarves at uni­ver­si­ties. Fol­low­ing this, the AKP passed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments weak­en­ing the inde­pen­dence of the mil­i­tary and judi­cia­ry, both of which had threat­ened the AKP in defense of sec­u­lar­ism. The AKP has close ties with the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and oper­ates abroad with rep­re­sen­ta­tive offices in Europe, notably in Bel­gium, and has announced its intent to open them in oth­er west­ern countries.

Mil­lî Görüş oper­ates as the Islamis­che Gemein­schaft Mil­lî Görüş (IGMG) in Ger­many and is head­quar­tered in Cologne from where it over­sees the work of Mil­lî Görüş chap­ters in at least 12 Euro­pean coun­tries. The ide­ol­o­gy and polit­i­cal agen­da of Mil­lî Görüş is root­ed in the anti-West­ern and anti­se­mit­ic ideas of the for­mer Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Necmet­tin Erbakan, who until his death head­ed the Islamist Felic­i­ty Par­ty in Turkey. In 2017, Der Spiegel report­ed that between 2004–2009, IGMG offi­cers fun­neled at least €9.5 mil­lion to the Felic­i­ty Party.