Erdogan giving Muslim Brotherhood upper hand inside Turkish mosques

Asmaa al-Batakoshi

The regime of Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, claims to be defending the Islamic religion.

In essence, however, the regime works to control religious institutions, mosques and the minds of mosque-goers.

The Turkish government has started offering scholarships in mosque sermons and Islamic jurisprudence. The program falls into the aforementioned goal of the Turkish regime.

The ruling Justice and Development Party has offered major facilities for foreign students to join the scholarship program. On February 22, foreign students started enrolling in the international scholarship program for the College of Jurisprudence for the academic year 2020/2021.

The Directorate of Religious Affairs, widely known as Diyanet, said the program comes within cooperation with the Turkish Ministry of Education.

Erdogan’s arm

Muslim Brotherhood arms in Turkey worked to infiltrate Islamic societies around the world. These arms used Diyanet in achieving their goal.

According to a previous report by The Reference, Diyanet controls as many as 90,000 mosques in Turkey and thousands of other mosques outside it.

This organization works to promote extremist ideas in the mosques it controls. It also works to attract youth and children to its ideology.

Diyanet is one of the arms of the Muslim Brotherhood inside Turkey. It is the tool of the group for spreading its ideology.

Diyanet is present in 111 countries. It claims to be offering educational services in these countries.

Infiltrating Arab states

The religious scholarships offered by the Turkish government especially target educated youth in Arab and African states. The scholarships aim at creating the necessary support base for Turkey in these countries.

Applicants for the scholarships have to be non-Turkish nationals who are not older than 16 years of age. The applicants must also have completed their preparatory education.

Turkish religious institutes admit tens of thousands of Arab students every year. The institutes give the chance for these students to communicate with Turkish students, which ensures the presence of a Turkish influence on them.