The German sovereign prosecutor had announced progressing in a week a opening of an review into claims that Turkish agents have been espionage on followers of Gulen, whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames for a unsuccessful manoeuvre try final year.
Relations between NATO allies Germany and Turkey have been stretched by disputes centred on tellurian rights issues, generally given final July’s failed coup and a successive crackdown on purported conspirators.
The quarrel deepened after Germany and a Netherlands blocked debate events by Turkish ministers progressing this month forward of a referendum opinion to boost presidential powers. In an indignant response, Erdogan indicted both countries of
using “Nazi” methods.
More than 41,000 people in Turkey have been arrested over suspected links to Gulen’s movement, and 100,000 dismissed or dangling from their jobs. Many of them are teachers, police, magistrates and journalists.
Boris Pistorius, interior apportion of a German state of Lower Saxony, said on Tuesday that Erdogan’s supervision had asked Berlin to assistance view on about 300 purported Gulen supporters in Germany.
On Friday a Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily and informal open television channels pronounced that German prosecutors had final month begun investigating Halife Keskin, who heads a unfamiliar family dialect of a Turkish state religious affairs group Diyanet.
According to a media reports, Germany suspects a group of seeking its members formed overseas, particularly imams in Germany, to accumulate information on people deemed tighten to Gulen.
The German Der Spiegel weekly reported Friday that Diyanet had asked Turkish consulates in 35 countries to accumulate information about Gulen supporters.
The repository cited Australia, Nigeria, Mauritania and Mongolia as among the countries targeted.
Article source: https://www.thelocal.de/20170401/germany-opens-spying-probe-into-turkish-religious-agency