Erdogan was well received in Egypt during his trip.
CAIRO: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood this week showed one of the few signs of anger toward Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to the country, lashing out at his calls for Egypt to be a secular state and form a constitution based on those principles.
During his two-day visit to Egypt, Turkey’s PM was outspoken in his belief that Egypt could be a moderate Islamic country much like his own Turkey.
Hundreds of Egyptians gathered to welcome the Turkish leader, who won widespread support for his expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to Ankara and the cutting off of diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.
Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan said in a statement released by the Islamic group that Erdogan’s comments constituted foreign intervention into Egypt’s internal issues.
He said that it would be impossible to apply Turkey’s political reality to Egypt.
Erdogan said on the television program that “a secular state does not mean that the people are atheists, it means respect for all religions and each individual has the freedom to practice his own religion.”
He added that “99 percent of the population in Turkey are Muslims, there are Christians, Jews and minorities, but the state treats them equally and this is recognized by Islam and has been true throughout Islamic history.”
Essam el-Erian, deputy leader of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party said, “we welcome Turkey and we welcome Erdogan as a prominent leader but we do not think that he or his country alone should be leading the region or drawing up its future.”
Despite the criticism, many younger members of the Brotherhood have for a number of years, pushed for greater reforms internally within the group in an effort to promote many ideas similar to the Turkish model, which has enabled an Islamic government to take power.
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Ankara is gradually losing hope and distancing itself from President Bashar al-Assad.
If you look closely, the prime minister is becoming increasingly tough with every statement he makes and the dose of his warnings is increasing. Even though he has not burned bridges like he did with Moammar Gadhafi, a surprise is still expected, the dominant belief is that Assad will not be able to solve the situation easily.
Those talks I have had with people who are the final decision makers on the subject show clearly how serious the situation is.
It is not only that the tensions in Ankara are rising but the viewpoint of Damascus on Turkey is also changing. The embraces and words of fraternity of the past do not exist anymore.
On Syrian State Television, it is now openly said that the weapons of Muslim Brothers are coming from Turkey. Let us not forget that the Muslim Brothers is as dangerous and as much an enemy for the Syrian administration as the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, is for us.
As if this is not enough, a Turkish involvement behind the rebellions and the Antalya meeting of the dissidents is being discussed. Assad has not put forward his stance; he has not put Ankara at his opposing side but, you will see, it is not too far away.
The worst case scenario Ankara fears
The worst case scenario that Ankara fears most and will mobilize it is that the clashes expand to Aleppo and Damascus and the Assad regime decides to react extremely tough and bloody way. The meaning of this is that Assad uses all his military power and the internal conflict transforms quickly into an Alawite-Sunni clash. What is expected as a consequence of this is the flow of tens of thousands of Sunni-Syrians to Turkey. An official I spoke to on this subject said exactly this:
“Turkey has opened its territory for now, but when the figure reaches a point where we cannot handle it then we will have to close the border.”
Now, this is the situation the political power in Ankara worries about the most. The same official continued:
“We would close the border but we cannot turn our backs on neither the Sunnis nor the Alawites. If chaos starts, then we will have to form a security zone or a buffer zone inside Syrian territory.”
In a summit in Ankara recently, this was the scenario discussed.
Robert Fisk wrote about this possibility before and had drawn much criticism, but what he said was true.
Scenarios and preparations are unfolding.
“Military and civilian meetings about the buffer zone and other measures to be taken have increased in recent days. Add to that the invitation of all ambassadors in the Middle East to Ankara. The pressure is building.”
It is not only talk when Ankara says, “all measures have been taken.”
The most dreadful item on the agenda is the formation of a security zone inside Syrian territory that has too many risks and could overthrow the regional equilibrium and for that reason is never a desired option.
Turkey will not tolerate any initiative that would harm the will for reforms in Syria, Turkish MFA says
Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) announced on early Saturday that Turkey would not tolerate any initiative that would harm the will for reforms in Syria and that would hurt the stability of this country.
The Spokesperson for the MFA issued a statement in response to questions regarding the statements made by Syrian Muslim Brotherhood official Riyadh Al-Shaqfa in Istanbul.
In his statement, the Spokesperson said that, in this critical stage, it was impossible for Turkey to tolerate any initiative that would hurt the will for reforms in Syria.
We are confident that the people of Syria would convey their demands and expectations through peaceful ways and that the Syrian administration would begin the promised reform process as soon as possible, the MFA Spokesperson also said.
With the overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on Friday after thirty years in power, it appears increasingly likely that the long-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood will gain political clout in whatever new government emerges in Cairo.
Globe file photo: Supporters of Turkey's Justice and Developpment Party (AKP) waved national and Palestinian flags at a 2009 rally.
The Brotherhood, suppressed under Mubarak, advocates an “Islamist” agenda, which has alarmed some American analysts worried about the possibility of Egypt turning into a new Iran. But others have argued that the danger posed by the Brotherhood is exaggerated and point to Turkey, where a conservative Muslim party has been in power since 2002, as proof that an Islamic religious movement can coexist with democracy in the Middle East.
Indeed, Turkey has been cited by many as a model for the whole Arab world as it seeks to cope with the demands of greater democratization, economic prosperity, and political representation.
But comparisons to Turkey should be approached with caution. Despite their superficial similarities, the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) have little in common, Egypt and Turkey represent different political traditions, and the shape of any possible government in Cairo is unlikely to look much like that in Ankara. The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t look to Turkey for inspiration — and neither should secularists worried about how to contain them.
The first lesson to internalize is that the AKP, despite rhetoric that to some Western ears may sound similar to the Brotherhood’s, is a far cry from more hard-line groups in the region. The Turkish political vocabulary simply does not provide for such concepts as shariato advance an “Islamist” political agenda, as promoted by groups such as the Brotherhood.
Turkey’s geo-political traditions also offer checks on extremism that differ from Egypt’s. As the former imperial head of the Middle East, Turkey inherited a legacy of strong institutions personified by the highly visible role of the military. Turkey is also a member of NATO, and has had a privileged geo-strategic value to the West that provides a moderating influence.
Turkey, unlike Egypt, also has accommodated Islamist groups for decades, which has produced a tradition of Islamic parties playing by the rules that simply does not exist in Egypt. Turkey has experienced four military coups, but since the 1950s has been a multi-party democracy where the military chose to exert its power behind the scenes and allow more conservative Muslim parties to compete as long as civilian politicians abided by the constitutions the military wrote. Attempts to discredit and ban political parties that advocate an explicitly Islamist agenda has kept the AKP committed to Turkey’s secular rules of the political game, and is largely why they have been so successful. The AKP have won every election since its emergence in 2002 as a religious conservative party, whereas the Brotherhood has never played in or by the rules in Egypt — in part because Egyptian authorities moved so aggressively against Islamist parties, leaving them no place in the system.
Because it must compete, the AKP also speaks to Turks across a much wider range of issues. Today the AKP speaks for a large portion of the Turkish voters who want to see changes made in the approach and character of both their Republic and its international relations toward the West and Israel. With a majority of the Turkish parliament and municipal administrations controlled by the AKP since 2002, the very structure of the secular Turkish Republic is beginning to change. Not through a radical revolution, but rather through an incremental and technical process mandated by the Turkish constitution, something the Brotherhood has never been a part of in Egypt. The AKP draws its strength from its pragmatism not its ideology,a lesson that is often overlooked in the contentious debates about Turkey’s “turn to the East.”
With the fastest growing and largest economy in the Middle East, Turkey is uniquely placed to play a decisive role in providing incentives for the newly transformed governments and movements of the region. As a longtime ally of the West and new partner of the Middle East, Turkey has been seeking the role of mediator in every available arena including Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia. The AKP has been hosting delegations from Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood since its arrival to power in Ankara and has boasted of itsmoderating effect. This is something Egypt is nowhere close to doing and on which the Muslim Brotherhood has shown little interest given their dogmatic ideological stance.
At the end of the day, the AKP is a uniquely Turkish phenomenon unlikely to be repeated. Turkey did not transform itself from a defeated post-Ottoman state led by Ataturk’s military to a flourishing market-democracy overnight — it has been almost a century in the making. Before pundits turn Turkey into a role model for the post-Mubarak Egypt, we should have a better understanding of the very different contexts in which they have arisen.
Joshua W. Walker is a post-doctoral fellow at the Crown Center at Brandeis University and a research fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
