The Diyanet Center of America (DCA), the US arm of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, reported $78.6 million in assets and a $3 million operating deficit in its latest tax filing, with assets declining every year since 2015, according to Internal Revenue Service records shared by ProPublica.
The DCA, one of the largest tax-exempt Islamic nonprofits in the United States, operates from a 15-acre complex in Lanham, Maryland, that was inaugurated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in April 2016.
According to its Form 990, filed on March 3, 2026, for fiscal year 2024, the DCA reported $3,519,319 in revenue and $6,490,100 in expenses. Total assets stood at $78,623,085 at the end of the year, down from $81,765,393 a year earlier.
Assets fell by nearly $25 million between 2015 and 2024, from $103.4 million to $78.6 million. The 2015 filing, which covered the year before the complex opened, was the only year in that period in which revenue exceeded expenses, with $6.4 million in contributions and $3.2 million in expenses. Filings from 2013 and 2014, when the current complex was under construction, showed contributions of $36.4 million and $49.1 million, respectively.
The Cumhuriyet daily reported on Tuesday that the DCA ranks third among 501(c)(3) Islamic nonprofits in the United States by asset size, behind the Virginia-based Safa Trust, with $336 million in assets, and Islamic Relief USA, with $232.4 million. Safa Trust is classified as a grantmaking foundation, while the DCA is classified as a religious center.
In 2024, rental income accounted for $2,167,881 of total revenue, while contributions totaled $975,575 and program service revenue came to $877,766. Other salaries and wages totaled $745,263 in 2023 and $885,583 in 2024. The 2024 filing lists Executive Director Ahmet Salih Bayraktar as receiving $33,000 in reportable compensation and shows no other paid officers.
The organization is treated as a religious entity that, like churches, is not legally required to file Form 990, though it has done so every year.
The complex includes an 879-square-meter mosque, about 9,460 square feet, with capacity for 3,000 worshippers, as well as a community building and conference hall. Cumhuriyet said the campus also includes 11 villas, two detached villa-style houses, a 24-room guesthouse, a restaurant, gift shops, an indoor swimming pool, a gym and a Turkish bath.
The DCA was founded in 1993 as the Turkish American Islamic Foundation. It was renamed the Turkish American Community Center in 2003 and later took the name Diyanet Center of America after the expanded complex was built.
The Diyanet and the Turkey Diyanet Foundation (TDV) invested more than $90 million in the facility, Turhan Çömez, then deputy parliamentary group chair of the nationalist İYİ (Good) Party, told the Sözcü daily in June 2024. Çömez said the facility had annual expenses of $5.1 million and yearly losses of $2.5 million and that employees received $700,000 in annual salaries, which he described as poor management.
Addressing the Diyanet and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, Çömez questioned why the agency owned villas, hotel-style accommodations, a Turkish bath and a swimming pool in the United States and spent millions on such facilities while people in Turkey faced economic hardship.