The Brotherhood factor in Turkey–Saudi relations

In these days when I am writing a series on the relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, especially as they are reflected in or influenced by the media, interesting developments are occurring in the course of these relations.

I mentioned it in my last column. We are facing an intense anti-Turkey campaign launched by some activists from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. This campaign is not merely a partisan or prejudiced language that spontaneously reflects in the language of certain news reports. It was a campaign conducted with quite hostile, adversarial feelings. A campaign aiming at affecting Turkey's economy in these days and thereby determining the election process, and hence toppling Erdoğan…

Interestingly, the answer to this campaign came within a short time with a new and powerful campaign by other activists, again Saudi and Kuwaiti. In the campaign carried on under the title "Our summer is nicer in Turkey!", video clips, pictures and examples of good experiences that show a holiday in Turkey as truly lovely are given, and Turkey's various opportunities and beauties are reflected.

This campaign emerges entirely as the effort of voluntary Arab activism. In addition, members of parliament from Kuwait, in meetings held in the national assembly, proceeding from the view that standing by Turkey in this attack to which it has been subjected is a duty, have taken and put into effect a series of decisions. These include a campaign to convert Kuwaiti citizens' savings into Turkish lira, and the rearrangement of a double taxation matter with Turkey in Turkey's favor.

Noting this new development, let us move on to another factor that affects Turkey-Saudi Arabia relations in one way or another, the factor of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Especially after the Arab Spring process, immediately after the military coup against Muhammad Morsi, of Brotherhood origin, who had won the elections in Egypt, a serious area of tension formed between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. As is known, Saudi Arabia supported this coup, financed it, and has continued to do so to this day. Turkey, for its part, became the country that displayed the clearest, indeed the only clear, stance in the world against this military coup. This stance of Turkey's is a clear difference in position between the two countries. There is no doubt about this.

Instead of presenting a solid argument to defend their own stance, the Saudi media understood this stance of Turkey as an inclination toward the Brotherhood and set about trying to virtually identify Turkey with the Brotherhood.

Yet Turkey's stance against the coup was not a defense of the Brotherhood; it was a stance against coups and against the open human rights violations that emerge with coups. Sisi's using a duty entrusted to him as a coup instrument to come to power was above all a betrayal of a trust and a usurpation of authority, and the support of this betrayal by any Muslim country is overall a serious moral problem of the entire Islamic world.

Moreover, the blood of the thousands of innocent people shed during this coup bore witness to the brutality of that coup, its massacre, its intense human rights violations. After the coup nearly a hundred thousand people in total were arrested and subjected to severe torture. Currently more than 60 thousand, old and young, women, sick, are being held in the harshest dungeon conditions, deprived of the most basic right to health and treatment, the right to a fair trial, the right to meet with relatives and lawyers. These people would have deserved to be defended even if they were not the Brotherhood but some other structure. Turkey has taken it upon itself as a duty to raise the level of human rights across the Islamic world. Someone in the Islamic world truly needs to take this on as a duty. Islam is a religion that regards human rights as the rights of the servant (kul hakkı) and defines the matter directly as a heavy religious responsibility; so much so that we would not need others to give us lessons in human rights. But unfortunately we forget Islam's sensitivity on this matter and care about the subject only to the extent that it becomes an international one. The whole Islamic world needs to develop a common stance toward the severe inhuman practices in Egypt today.

The matter has nothing to do with the Brotherhood. The Turkish experience and the Brotherhood experience are very different from each other. But since we have mentioned the Brotherhood, let us also clarify what kind of social segment we are talking about. With its organization spread across the whole world today, the Brotherhood has a population and influence that would make up several countries. In many countries it is either in power, or a partner in power, or the main opposition. But it is a movement that, everywhere it is active, has put an extremely clear distance between itself and terror and violence. The gravest accusation made against the Brotherhood regarding its relation to terror is that organizations or persons involved in certain terror incidents were once members of the Brotherhood. Thus it is said that the Brotherhood, even if it does not harbor an understanding of violence, has given birth to it. Yet the more correct way of looking at these relations is this: since the Brotherhood does not harbor within it anyone inclined to violence, those with this inclination can do what they want only once they have left the Brotherhood.

The Saudi side needs to understand this well. The Turkish experience is an experience far beyond the Brotherhood, but Turkey regards the Brotherhood as well as a reality and a part of the Islamic ummah. Just as it has an attitude between Iran and Saudi Arabia of drawing them closer rather than making them hate, of uniting rather than separating, of reconciling rather than setting in conflict, its attitude on the Brotherhood is no different. Indeed, we said that because it strives for this, it cannot be concluded that Turkey approves of everything Iran does.

In my opinion, Saudi Arabia's fears or concerns about the Brotherhood are utterly unfounded. Although Iran's anti-Saudi stance is very clear, there is no sign of any anti-Saudi stance on the part of the Brotherhood other than the statements of some isolated individuals. Despite its support for the Sisi coup, Brotherhood circles never went to criticism that exceeded the dose in their statements against Saudi Arabia. Moreover, if Saudi Arabia were to make a genuine assessment of friend and foe, it would see that the most vigorous social force it can rely on in the Islamic world is none other than the Brotherhood.

To the extent that it does not see this and turns an unfounded fear of the Brotherhood into policy, Saudi Arabia is destroying its own most natural social support.

On this blessed day of Ramadan we are doing what falls to us from the clear command in God's book: "The believers are but brothers, so make peace between your brothers!"