ORSAM Roundtable Meeting on “Muslim Brotherhood Movement From Turkish and Iranian Perspectives”

4 dakika okuma süresi

A roundtable meeting on “Muslim Brotherhood Movement From Turkish and Iranian Perspectives” was held at ORSAM on 6 March 2015 with the contributions of Tehran University Professor of Political Science Dr. Davood Feirahi and SETA Researcher Can Acun as speakers. The meeting was moderated by Assist. Prof. Dr. Bayram Sinkaya from Yıldırım Beyazıt University Department of International Relations. The audience composed of members of different universities, think tanks and foreign embassies as well as ORSAM researchers.

Dr. Feirahi, as the first speaker, emphasized that the Muslim Brotherhood Movement should be considered within the framework of three concepts. These are Muslim Brotherhood’s idea of democracy, independence of religion and state from each other, and independence of army and politics from each other. According to Dr Feirahi, one other aspect of Muslim Brotherhood that can be regarded as negative is that the takfiri currents benefit from the Muslim Brotherhood organization. For instance, Ansar ul-Islam of Iraq has a salafist dogma but a Muslim Brotherhood organization. This shows that Muslim Brotherhood organization has the potential to radicalize. Although this is not a fault of Muslim Brotherhood, it demonstrates that the radical currents are influenced by the organization of Muslim Brotherhood. Moreover, there are reasons for Muslim Brother hood’s success and failure at the same time. Salafists have a negative outlook about Muslim Brotherhood and think that they are not religious enough. Those who adhere to secular thinking, however, think that Muslim Brotherhood is a salafist organization. Therefore, both groups accuse Muslim Brotherhood with hypocrisy (nefaq). According to Dr. Feirahi, there are two arguments about the future of Muslim Brotherhood. One is that Muslim Brotherhood presents the best way to make peace with modernity, and the other is that Muslim Brotherhood will be stuck in the salafism deadlock. However, in order to understand the current events in the Middle East region, it is necessary to know Muslim Brotherhood thought well.

SETA Researcher Can Acun, who was the second speaker, elaborated on the Turkey-Muslim Brotherhood relations. He stated that the long-established relations, which had been run by National Vision Movement for a long time, experienced two important cleavages. First one is the 28 February process and the second one is the split in National Vision Movement into two actors that are Ak Party and Saadet Party. Especially with the disengagement of Ak Party from the National Vision Movement, Muslim Brotherhood had to face with the problem of with which wing of the National Vision they would establish relations. According to Acun, Arab Spring created the third big cleavage in bilateral relations in the last period. According to this, there occurred sharing of experience between Turkey and Muslim Brotherhood that came to power in Egypt after the Arab Spring, but this experience-sharing was also subjected to severe criticisms. That Turkey established relations only with the Muslim Brotherhood and disregarded other actors in Egyptian politics was the most important one. According to Acun, Muslim Brotherhood was left in solitude in the counter-revolution process in Egypt since because they dissociated themselves from other actors in Egyptian politics and this also cost to Turkey. Moreover, while Muslim Brotherhood was trying to develop a model called “civilized state” that included shari’a ordinances, Turkey’s presenting a secular model for Egypt created disillusionment on the part of Muslim Brotherhood. After all, Muslim Brotherhood could not meet especially economic demands of Egyptian people and entered into 30 June process. Morsi did not accept the solution of initiating election process, which was also endorsed by Turkey, and faced with the coup. However, Turkey’s policy regarding Muslim Brotherhood did not change after the coup. The two reasons of this continuation are the organization of Muslim Brotherhood and their stance against radicalization.

The meeting ended with the questions and comments of the audience and the answers of the speakers.