Turkey will stop sending imams to German mosques - here’s why this matters
For decades, the Turkish government has sent imams to work in mosques across Germany.
- For decades, the Turkish government has sent imams to work in mosques across Germany.
- Imams are sent to Germany on four- to six-year rotations, based on a long-standing agreement between the two governments.
- German politicians have accused Turkish imams of spying on their flocks or abusing their positions to promote support for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party.
The ‘strategy’ of sending imams
- It was only in the 1980s that the Turkish government began sending cohorts of imams abroad, after it had become evident that a large Turkish population was in Germany to stay.
- One was to use state imams to create an alternative to Islamic groups active in Germany who opposed the secular Turkish state.
- Sending imams abroad was an example of this strategy being exported to Turkey’s overseas diaspora.
Only Turkish imams for Germany
- And they believed that imams employed by the Turkish state were guaranteed to be well-trained and moderate.
- Already by the end of the 1980s, more than 500 Turkish state imams were active in Germany.
- This meant that imams from Turkey or anywhere else in the world who wanted to work in Germany but were not employed by the Turkish government faced new hurdles.
Limits to the influence of Turkish state imams
- Both governments assumed that Turkish state imams would be able to reshape German mosques, eliminate perceived extremism and ensure secular Islamic practice in Germany.
- Those institutions did not disappear when competition in the form of Turkish state imams arrived.
- Both now and then, many Muslims with Turkish roots choose to attend mosques with Turkish state imams, but many do not.
Imams trained in Germany?
- In the coming years, imams trained in academies in Germany will replace more and more Turkish state imams as they end their rotations in Germany and return home.
- According to this plan, the eventual result will be that only domestically trained, German-speaking imams will work in German mosques at some point in the near future.
Brian Van Wyck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.