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The Muslim Brotherhood’s Survival Is Now in Question
Turkey has turned its back on the Islamist group, eliminating one of its last safe havens.
More than a decade since Arab Spring gave the group its first real shot at mainstream politics, it has splintered in various factions, and is struggling to gain legitimacy among younger Muslims. As it fights for its very survival, there is discernible concern that the space it has ceded has simply been claimed by the regional autocrats. But there is also a faint and a very cautious hope that a less dogmatic and more democratic opposition will eventually emerge in the region.
Formed in 1928 to take on British imperialism and to Islamize the society through Sharia, the Muslim Brotherhood eventually became the most influential pan-Arab Islamist organization, and despite several sporadic rounds of crackdown remained prominent across the region. It spawned peaceful political movements but also inspired violent ideologues opposed to Western culture and a modern way of life.
In 2011, it emerged as the strongest and most organized opposition force in Egypt in the protests, and for the first time succeeded in installing one of its own as president. In Tunisia, a Muslim Brotherhood-inspired political party called Ennahda was part of a coalition government. But for various reasons, including deep divisions and inexperience in actual governance, both failed to deliver. Timothy Kaldas, the deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told Foreign Policy that while the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates were electorally untested. “When they were in power in Egypt and in Tunisia, they didn’t deliver results people were looking for,” he said.
The group’s political rise in Egypt was short-lived. Sisi, then the defense minister of Egypt, ousted then-President Mohamed Morsi in a coup in 2013 and launched the most brutal crackdown against its members since the group’s inception. More than 800 pro-Brotherhood protesters were killed in the Rabaa massacre on August 14 that year, according to Human Rights Watch, which equated it to the killings in the Tiananmen Square. Thousands of the group’s members and leaders were imprisoned or forced into exile and most fled to Turkey, Qatar, and the United Kingdom.
Ayyash Abdelrahman, an Egyptian dissident and former Brotherhood member who left the group due to political disagreements in 2011, moved to Turkey, where his wife owned property. Abdelrahman lived in Istanbul for six years until October last year, when Turkish authorities refused to renew his residency, forcing him to move to the United Kingdom. Abdelrahman, a fellow with the Century Foundation, said he was given just 10 days to pack his bags. “I think I could not renew my residence permit because of this new rapprochement between the Turkish government and Egypt,” he said, although he noted that it also could have been due to a general spike in “xenophobia against foreigners, especially Arabs.” Ayyash lived in the Basaksehir neighborhood in Istanbul, adopted home of many of the Muslim Brotherhood members who fled to Turkey.
The group also had itself to blame for its steep fall in the estimation of millions of its supporters, who have interpreted the group’s split into three different factions as a sign of the leadership’s selfishness and its failure to prioritize the collective interests of Muslims and the spread of Islamic law.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/07/muslim-brotherhood-turkey-survival/#:~:text=But%20there%20is%20also%20a,looking%20for%2C%E2%80%9D%20he%20said.