AN intelligence agency in Germany has been criticised for criminalising an entire community after a new report linked a number of Kurdish organisations operating in the country to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer detailed the institutions and organisations being watched by the agency during a Berlin press conference on Wednesday.

He was commenting on the 2017 report from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which dedicated 30 pages to the Kurds and the PKK, saying the latter had a network of 14,500 members and supporters.

According to the report, young Kurdish people follow the PKK on social media and become involved as members or supporters.

The BfV claimed that the group had received an increase in donations from within Germany compared to 2016, with much of the funding being sent to Kurdish forces fighting Isis in Syria.

It said that the increase had probably been prompted by the Turkish invasion of the largely Kurdish Afrin canton in northern Syria.

"The attacks of the Turkish army increased the sense of solidarity in Kurdish society," the report suggested.

However, Kurdish news agency ANF warned that institutions such as the Kurdish Democratic Society Centre and Azadi, which campaign for the rights of Kurdish prisoners, are criminalised by the intelligence services.

ANF also criticised the report for suggesting that the Yeni Ozgur Politika newspaper was a “PKK daily paper” and for describing the news agency as “close to the PKK.”

German authorities have taken a tough stand on Kurdish organisations and symbols, banning the public display of People’s Protection Units flags along with those of the PKK or Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has has spent nearly 20 years in a Turkish prison.