European Union funds jihadists, anti-EU Islamist entities in Turkey

Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm

A significant portion of the funding from the European Union, intended to bring Turkey closer to European values, was instead funneled by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to entities known for their jihadist and political Islamist affiliations. Despite billions being spent on improving Turkish democracy and the rule of law, the results have been the opposite of what was intended.

According to a review by Nordic Monitor on the disbursement of EU funding in Turkey, millions of euros from the European Union’s multibillion-euro program to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe, under a project called Erasmus, were channelled directly or indirectly to jihadist and Islamist entities that support the Erdogan government.

In addition to the Erasmus program, billions of euros allocated to Turkey to improve democracy, the rule of law and civil society have been wasted. The rule of law in the country has effectively been suspended, Turkey’s fledgling democracy has transformed into a repressive regime and the nation’s vibrant civil society has been decimated. Hundreds of NGOs have been shut down, their members prosecuted and/or imprisoned in sham criminal investigations. Journalists have been thrown into jail, and the political opposition has faced a harsh crackdown.

In other words the grants and assistance provided by the EU to realign Turkey with EU values as part of facilitating Turkish membership in the bloc actually produced unintended results. Instead of fostering alignment with European values, these funds reinforced the Erdogan government and its affiliated organizations and entities that propagate anti-EU views among the Turkish population.

It is not easy to trace, assess and obtain a full accounting of how EU funding in Turkey was distributed. This difficulty arises from the opaque and complex disbursing schemes, the involvement of multiple entities in the financing pipeline and the discrepancy between the stated goals on the applications and the actual results on the ground. Nevertheless, the identity of some of the organizations that received EU grants tells the tale of how the entire scheme has been operating for the last decade.

The grants, provided from the EU’s Erasmus budget, estimated to be about 26.2 billion euros for the 2021-2027 period, were allocated to Turkey’s controversial religious organizations either directly under approved projects or indirectly through accredited entities that further disbursed the EU grants to other entities.

The authority responsible for deciding how EU Erasmus grants are to be used in Turkey is the Center for European Union Education and Youth Programs (Ulusal Ajans), also known as the Turkish National Agency. It is run by İlker Astarcı, who was previously President Erdogan’s advisor. Astarcı had worked in the presidential palace, managed Erdogan’s public relations office and even led public diplomacy campaigns to burnish the image of the Turkish president.

The IHH received 60,000 euros from the EU Erasmus program in 2023 for a single project:

The Turkish National Agency operates under the foreign ministry’s Directorate of European Union Affairs. The ministry is led by Hakan Fidan, the former head of Turkish intelligence agency MIT, which has been involved in black sites where kidnapped political opponents were tortured, engaged in transnational repression, carried out spying in allied countries and ran false flag operations to support the Erdogan regime.

The EU has been on the back burner on the Erdogan government’s priority list for some time. Turkey often opted out of the EU’s common foreign policy goals. In a strong signal that EU membership was not a priority for his government, President Erdogan abolished the Ministry of European Union Affairs in 2018 and downgraded the status of the institution handling Turkey’s accession talks with the bloc.

Yet, funding from the EU has continued to flow into Turkey, especially under the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) program, which is a tool the EU designed to support reforms in candidate countries with financial and technical assistance. Between 2014 and 2020, the EU allocated 3.5 billion euros for IPA programs aimed at improving democracy, the rule of law and civil society in Turkey. However, despite these efforts, all indexes related to these parameters worsened further during this period.

The funding disbursed from the EU’s Erasmus program highlights the priorities of the Erdogan government in propping up religious and political Islamist organizations in Turkey and abroad with taxpayer money from EU member states.

Among those who received funding from the EU was the jihadist charity organization Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri ve İnsani Yardım Vakfı, or IHH). The IHH has been flagged by the UN Security Council for trafficking arms to jihadist groups, including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It is known to work closely with Turkish intelligence agency MIT in carrying out overseas operations.

In 2023 the IHH received 60,000 euros for a youth program that was aimed at educating and training adults. It was one of eight recipients of EU grants among 72 projects considered for funding eligibility. It was evident that the IHH secured the funding with the support of the Erdogan government.

The Önder İmam Hatipliler Derneği (Önder Imam Hatipliler Association, Önder), an Islamist organization known for its staunch support of the Erdogan government, was awarded 60,000 euros for a small-scale youth project under the Erasmus program last year. In 2022 it received 52,560 euros for another project. Önder is one of the key drivers in staffing government jobs under Erdogan’s Islamist regime, representing many graduates of religious schools known as imam hatip, one of which Erdogan attended, across Turkey. Önder harbors anti-Western views and promotes antisemitism among Turkey’s youth.

Önder received 60,000 euros from the EU for a project in 2023:

Hundreds of thousands of euros in funding also went directly to individual imam hatip schools or through provincial branches of the Ministry of Education. It is challenging to get a clear picture of the total amount as the details of many projects are not publicly available. Last year the Şehit Adil Büyükcengiz Anadolu İmam Hatip High School in Istanbul received 53,288 euros for one project. An all-girls imam hatip school in Hatay, the İskenderun Kız Anadolu İmam Hatip High School, received 51,664 euros for a democracy-building and social cohesion project. Two other imam hatip schools in Konya and Kahramanmaraş provinces each received 60,000 euros. The list goes on and on.

The Turkish intelligence-linked SETA Foundation, which functions as a revolving door for staffing Islamists in key government positions and operates as a propaganda tool for the regime under the guise of a think tank, received 250,000 euros from the EU’s Erasmus program last year. İbrahim Kalın, the former head of SETA, is currently the director of Turkey’s national intelligence agency MIT. Kalın, nurtured in pro-Iran circles during his youth, has been one of the key architects of Turkey’s new foreign policy that has created a host of troubles with the transatlantic alliance in the last decade.

The Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (Mustakil Sanayici ve İşadamları Derneği, MÜSİAD), an Islamist business group known for its steadfast support of the Erdogan government, is another organization that benefited from EU funding. In 2023 it received 409,504 euros for a project declared to be for vocational training. In the same year MÜSİAD received 250,000 euros for another project aimed at youth employability.

The Turkey Diyanet Foundation (Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, TDV), the wealthiest foundation in Turkey, which is run by the government’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet), is another organization that tapped into the EU’s youth funds. In 2023 the TDV obtained 45,870 euros from the Erasmus program for a capacity enhancement project aimed at youth programs. Over the last decade the TDV has been actively working with the Diyanet to fund foreign youth groups, training them as imams who will be assigned overseas to run Turkish mosques, part of the Erdogan government’s program to export its political Islamist ideology abroad.

The Foundation of Youth and Education in Turkey (TÜRGEV), a well-endowed organization that receives substantial donations from both domestic and external sources, received EU funding directly or indirectly. The foundation, run by Erdogan’s son Bilal, operates the Islamist Ibn Haldun University in Istanbul, which received 60,000 euros last year and 400,000 euros in 2022.

The foundation’s objective is to raise politically Islamist youth in Turkey and abroad. It cooperates closely with other Islamist networks, including the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Turkish intelligence-linked SETA Foundation received a quarter million euros from the EU’s youth program in 2023: 

Similarly, the Islamist Maarif Foundation, an official Turkish government entity that functions as a conduit for exporting political Islam overseas through schools, is also among the beneficiaries of EU funds. Maarif is branded as a pet project of President Erdogan and serves as his regime’s long arm abroad in providing educational services as part of a proselytizing campaign. Established by law in 2014, its management is filled with known Islamists who embrace jihadist views. In 2022, it received 36,300 euros for a project.

The Maarif Foundation is part of Turkey’s Ministry of National Education. The ministry’s Directorate for Religious Education (Din Öğretimi Genel Müdürlüğü) is also listed as a beneficiary of EU youth funds and In 2022 was granted 107,660 euros.

A foundation called Recep Tayyip Erdogan Üniversitesi Geliştirme Vakfı, established to honor Erdogan’s legacy in his hometown of Rize, was granted 44,000 euros in 2023.

EU grants provided to the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (Mustakil Sanayici ve İşadamları Derneği, MÜSİAD), last year: 

Associations and foundations run by religious sects supportive of the Erdogan government also benefited from the EU’s youth programs. They included Hüdayi Mezunları Derneği (Association for the Graduates of Hudayi), which is part of the Hudayi network run by Ahmed Hamdi Topbaş and his cousin Mustafa Latif Topbaş. The Topbaş family is known as one of the main financial supporters of President Erdogan’s Islamist policies and his ruling party. They have a large network in Africa aimed at raising politically Islamist youth to support Erdogan’s global vision. Hüdayi received 57,250 euros for a project in 2023.

Grants provided to the Diyanet Foundation by the EU: 

Mustafa Latif Topbaş was exposed in 2013 when a criminal investigation revealed that he was working closely with Egyptian-born Saudi national Yasin al-Qadi, who had been flagged by the US Treasury and the UN al-Qaeda sanction committee. The investigation further revealed that Topbaş and Erdogan often consulted each other on how to coordinate their secret dealings.

Turkey’s public broadcaster, the main propaganda tool of the Islamist ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), also received hundreds of thousands of euros practically every year. The Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (Türkiye Radyo Televizyon Kurumu, TRT) was one of the key drivers of an anti-Western narrative among the Turkish public and often engaged in disinformation campaigns targeting European countries. In 2022, it received 400,000 euros for a single project from the EU.

The radical shift in TRT’s editorial policy, turning it into a mouthpiece of the Erdogan regime, as well as TRT’s operations abroad under the trademark of TRT World to promote political Islamist ideology and project Erdogan’s caliph-like image to Muslim communities around the world, including in the US, prompted the US government to re-evaluate TRT’s position in the US.

On August 1, 2019 the US Department of Justice (DOJ) National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section ordered TRT to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

EU funds to Turkey’s public broadcaster TRT:

EU funds channeled to religious high schools and the foundation called the Recep Tayyip Erdogan Üniversitesi Geliştirme Vakfı: 

There have been more controversial organizations in the long list of entities that were generously awarded EU grants. It appears that this pattern will continue in the coming years as well.

In 2023 Turkey received 105.5 million euros in grants from the EU’s Erasmus program, along with 5.1 million euros from the European Union Solidarity Fund (EUSF). This year, it is expected to receive 117.1 million euros from Erasmus and 6.1 million euros from EUSF. Between 2014 and 2020, Turkey spent 778 million euros from Erasmus grants, funding over 12,000 projects.

Turkey has also received the lion’s share of the IPA funds from the EU since 2002, totaling 9.2 billion euros in funding resources. Nearly 900 projects have been implemented through this funding to enhance Turkey’s ability to become a member of the EU. However, Turkey is far from membership, especially in terms of political criteria, compared to its status two decades ago, having rolled back most of the accomplishments made in the past. It will receive a sizable portion of the IPA funding, which is slated to be 14.32 billion euros between 2021 and 2027.

The end result of multibillion-euro funding to Turkey has resulted in the complete opposite of what EU policymakers originally intended to achieve. Today, the Turkish population is more anti-EU, largely due to the poisonous narrative Turks hear practically every day from their leaders and the government’s propaganda machine in the media, which peddles anti-Western conspiracy theories on a regular basis.

The Turkish judiciary has become a political tool of the Erdogan regime, used to punish its critics and opponents. Civil society has been re-engineered with pro-government entities, and the political landscape has been redesigned through manipulation, bribery and the co-opting of the opposition. Additionally, the foreign service is filled with intelligence agents, Islamists and neo-nationalists who view the West as the main threat to Turkey’s national security.

EU funding to the Hudayi religious sect: