Erdogan's Brotherhood connections far larger than politics

"I have a dream and a vision," Necmettin Erbakan, the spiritual leader of political Islam in Turkey, once said.

Erbakan adhered to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood with both his body and soul. In saying this, he meant the dream of reviving the Ottoman caliphate. His vision was about realizing this dream through party work in his country.

Erbakan formed a large number of political parties. They included the Justice and Development Party which was founded by his disciple, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The same party reached power in Turkey in 2002.

The years that passed and the developments that happened since then have not changed the nature of Erbakan's dream. They have not weakened links between Erdogan and his guide either.

Same basis

You will be amazed at Erdogan's enthusiasm as he prayed for Mohamed Morsi. It reflects the ideas he belongs to and exploits in his Ottoman project. The ideological bases of the Brotherhood did not differ from the ideas and strategies of the current movement founded by Erbakan in the form of new strategies, namely the restoration of the Ottoman Empire, and circumvention of the Turkish state systems to achieve this goal through the world's professorship.

Turkish writer Mohammed Zahid Gul, a chronicler of the movement, translated the book "milestones in the way" in the 1970s.

He also translated the book, "In the shadows of the Quran", as well as other works by Sayed Qutb. These books have had a strong impact on the Islamic religious culture in Turkey. Nonetheless, they did not have the same effect on movements and religious organizations in the Arab world.

On the ideological perspective of the AK Party, Turkey Post said on May 10, 2016 that Erdogan appears to be an Ottoman Islamist, posing as an enemy of the secular republic. It quoted Erdogan as saying in his party's founding speech on August 14, 2001, that "Turkey is for us all.

However, the party's landscape seems contradictory when he says at the founding stage that Turkey has to transcend the hegemony and domination struggle between the peaceful bloc and the Kemalist bloc.

The man of Anatolia must also impose on the arena his cadre, which can contain both parties within him, who addresses the entire people, and has his exclusive Islamic identity, which produces and declares his true manifestations.

Here there seems to be a clear contradiction between saying "both sides" and saying "his pure Islamic identity". "What we need from now on is to form a consensus bloc, the real bloc, not just a clique," said the author of the "Story of A Leader" about a letter from a businessman to a friend in the party who sought to reconcile Erdogan and Erbakan.

It refers to the real mass, the mass of the whole Muslim and non-Muslim people, religious and non-religious.

From these standpoints, the Brotherhood participated in the celebrations of the Turkish religious parties.

In 1998, Mustafa Mashhour, Mohamed Mahdi Akef, Ahmed Saif al-Islam Hassan al-Banna and Algerian Mahfouz al-Nahnah participated in the celebrations of the Islamic Welfare Party.

In June 2006, the Brotherhood took part in celebrating the 553th anniversary of the conquest of Constantinople, a celebration organized by the Turkish Party of Happiness, attended by Dr. Hassan Howaidi, the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, Al-Katatni - head of the parliamentary bloc of the Muslim Brotherhood at the time.

The leader of the Islamic Group in Pakistan, Judge Hussain Ait Ahmed, and the head of the Islamic Party in Malaysia, and the heads and representatives of Islamic movements in Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Russia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Balkans, India and several African countries.

The visit by Erdogan in September 2011 to Egypt and especially to the office of the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, stressed the party's relationship with the Brotherhood without any exaggeration.

A Brotherhood leader's record

The Turkish writer Basli Uzbay writes in his book "The Story of the Leader of the P33": Erdogan was born on 26 February 1954 in a poor family living in Kassem Pasha district, one of Istanbul's poorest neighborhoods.

His father was a naval captain who settled in this neighborhood, And he remained in the neighborhood until he completed his secondary education in the schools of imams and preachers, as that was the desire of his father known as religiosity. Some sources indicate that he joined the Ismaili Agha al-Naqshbandi Sufi order at the beginning before entering the field of party work. He was a member of the Union of Turkish Students in the schools of imams and preachers. He was in the most fertile of his cultural and educational periods. He was faithful to his graduation from the schools of imams and preachers until he brought his four sons to her.

Many of Erdogan's statements in various speeches result in the fact that he presents himself - or his party - as an extension of the era and the Ottoman heroes and as the opponent of the secular era, and when he opened his political consciousness the Turkish scene was witnessing the most successful Islamic attempt and man of the month: Necmettin Erbakan. At the age of 16, Erbakan was the founder of the National Order Party. When he was 17, the party was closed, and when he was eighteen, Erbakan returned to the political arena with his new party, Salama (1972).

Erdogan was the leader of the youth wing of the party of safety in Istanbul (1976) by winning the internal elections of the people of the youth party, and in (1994) was the strongest figure in the Welfare Party after Erbakan.

Using the Brotherhood

On Friday, February 17, 2017, Erdogan delivered a speech in which he said he does not consider the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, because it is not an armed organization, but an intellectual organization!"

Erdogan failed to hide his ideological convictions, and tried to emerge as a new leader of the Muslim Brotherhood to pull it out of its failures and internal conflicts, and brings together its leaders in the region to start a new path to achieve clear and specific goals.

The Turkish president exploited the crisis of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab countries after its failure to isolate it from power in Egypt, classifying it as a terrorist organization in a number of Arab countries, and exploiting the group's frustrations over the collapse of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was not related to the adoption by the West and the United States of a project to escalate political Islam under the title of "moderate Islam" or "democratic Islam" in order to employ it in two tracks, to inherit the traditional Arab system and to launch an Islamic succession project. The second employment in the trajectories of its conflicts with the countries of the West, taking advantage of the Brotherhood's desire for revenge after abandoning the support of their political project in power.

"Erdogan knows that Turkey's occupation of Arab lands will not be accepted by the Arab world if it is received by Erdogan and the Turkish leaders, while it can be marketed if promoted by Arab Islamic movements and others linked to the Palestinian situation. Changing the face of the group and suggesting that it is different under Turkish leadership than it was under the leadership of the brothers of Egypt. It also requires portraying the role and role of the group in its new stage under Turkish leadership as a holy mission led by an Islamic leader. The acceptance of the Arab public sector movements and practices of the Turkish army in the Arab depth, but also obtained the efforts of some of the Arabs in the army to support the occupation of their land.

In this context, Ahmad Charay, a columnist for the National Interest, said Erdogan was unlikely to give up his support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which helps it maintain its regional influence.

Erdogan has entrusted the entire Brotherhood to the Turkish interests by compensating the frustrations of the members of the group following its defeats and local setbacks by linking them with the dream of the caliphate.

He tried to transfer them to the Turkish situation and from serving local projects to his own project. This was evident in his speech during the 90th anniversary of the establishment of the organization, in which he called for forgetting the crimes of the group committed over the past years in an effort to persuade the Turkish people to accept them under Turkish leadership as an exceptional leadership that will eventually lead the Muslims to the victory shown in the world, Terrorist workers in order to restore local authority.

It was agreed that Gamal Badawi (Canada) would supervise the file of education and control all the educational institutions in the world for the opening of Allah, by buying them or competing with a better alternative. Wadah Khanfar also supervises the media file, and Azmi Bishara will collect all the remaining left and open or buy research centers.

Turkey established the so-called Knowledge Foundation, and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Gamal Badawi, a Canadian resident, was entrusted with the administration of educational bodies. It also founded the Dîtib, a Turkish institution for the management of religious affairs, including the French Council for the Islamic Faith, the Belgian Executive Center and a large number of institutions The Netherlands, and Eastern Europe.

Hence, the relationship between the Erdogan and the Brotherhood is not only a political relationship, but it is much larger. It is an ideological relationship in the first place.