A pro-Kurdish news outlet claimed on Sunday that spies affiliated with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have infiltrated Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), the Stockton Center for Freedom (SCF) reported.
According to a report by the pro-Kurdish Fırat news agency (ANF), German police took action after seeing personal information about opponents of the Erdoğan regime who have applied for asylum in Germany appearing frequently in the Justice and Development Party (AKP) media, and they think Erdoğan supporters have infiltrated the immigration bureau.
Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) has set up a network of agents in Germany primarily through the controversial Religious Affairs Turkish-Islamic Union (DİTİB), Turkish consulates, shell companies and Turkish banks. ANF claimed that MİT has also infiltrated German police departments and collected information on Kurds and critical Turks.
The report claimed that some applicants for positions in Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, had been revealed to be connected to MİT. BAMF, the first authority people appeal to after fleeing the Erdoğan regime, is now among German institutions that MİT has infiltrated.
BAMF decides whether asylum seekers who made it to Germany are granted the status of refugee. Applicants give their first deposition in this office and detail how they escaped the Erdoğan regime. What has attracted attention is that information about how the applicants have fled, what their names are and which city they are in has frequently appeared in the pro-Erdoğan media in Turkey, after the applicants have their first appointment in the refugee office.
For security reasons, the applicants’ cities of residence are not made public, but according to the “Report Mainz” program on ARD television and today’s Der Spiegel, the asylum seekers blame the refugee office workers, Turkish translators and security forces for the leak scandal.
Upon complaints from asylum seekers, the German police launched an investigation into espionage in the office. An official from the investigation unit spoke to Der Spiegel and said they are taking the matter very seriously. The refugee office is reported to have stopped working with 15 translators who they suspect are not neutral.
German Green Party leader Cem Özdemir stated that “everybody who works for the security of this country must remain loyal to the laws of the country,” and he demanded a detailed investigation. German politicians think the translators should be contracted only after passing a security investigation.
Turkish-German chief inspector Döndü Yazgan, whose name and ties to MİT during her time in the “harmony police” department in Wiesbaden, Hessen, had been exposed by ANF in August, was one of the Erdoğan regime’s spies. After an investigation, Yazgan was demoted to a low-level officer in the Hessen police.
In July, MİT had attempted to infiltrate Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution but reportedly failed. The German intelligence agency was going to hire new officers, and the Turkish speaking applicants had drawn their attention. The applications were rejected on suspicion of the applicants’ ties to MİT.
Some 600 senior Turkish officials have sought asylum in Germany since a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016, the Berliner Morgenpost reported on Saturday. According to the reported that the more than 600 asylum applicants comprised 250 persons with Turkish diplomatic passports and 380 with identity papers showing them to be senior Turkish public servants.