Austria has said it will close down seven mosques and expel imams who it says are funded by foreign countries.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the move was a crackdown on political Islam.
Some mosques are suspected of having links to Turkish nationalists. In April images emerged showing children in Turkish army uniforms re-enacting World War One’s Battle of Gallipoli.
The Austrian government says 60 of the 260 imams in the country are being investigated, of whom 40 belong to ATIB, a Muslim group close to the Turkish government.
“Parallel societies, political Islam and radicalisation tendencies have no place in our country,” said Chancellor Kurz on Friday.
The Gallipoli re-enactment performance took place in a mosque reported to be run by the Turkish ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves group in Vienna-Favoriten district. The group has branches in several countries.
Austrian media report that the child actors played dead and were covered with Turkish flags. Austrian public broadcaster ORF says photos of children doing the Grey Wolves greeting also came from that mosque. The government is dissolving an organisation called the Arab Religious Community. Six of the mosques targeted for closure are run by it: three in Vienna, two in Upper Austria and one in Carinthia.
In neighbouring Germany, police have been probing links between certain imams and the Turkish state, which funds a Muslim organisation called Ditib.T he Austrian authorities have been working with a Muslim community body called IGGÖ to identify mosques and imams suspected of radical Islamist or nationalist connections.