The Muslim Brotherhood’s Survival Is Now in Question

In mid-June, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and hailed it as a “new era” in the two countries’ relationship. It marked an end to tensions that had reached their pinnacle in 2018 after Turkey’s media published information apparently leaked from the Turkish government about the gruesome murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. In April 2022, a Turkish court transferred the trial of Khashoggi’s alleged murderers to Riyadh—a peace offering that paved the path for Erdogan’s first trip in years to the oil-rich kingdom, which occurred later that month.

But it was Erdogan’s ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots that began the breakdown in relations more than a decade ago at the start of uprisings in the Arab world. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt saw the Pan-Arab Islamist group as a challenge to their autocratic systems of government, while Erdogan hoped to piggyback on the Muslim Brotherhood’s electoral success in Egypt in 2011 and 2012 to eventually replace Saudi Arabia as the de facto leader of the Sunni Islamic world. Turkey became one of the region’s only safe havens for the Muslim Brotherhood. 

In that sense, Turkey’s most important goodwill gesture toward Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE may have been its recent turn away from supporting the Islamist group. Turkey’s detente with the trio moved in parallel with limiting the Muslim Brotherhood’s movement and ability to operate. Turkey asked Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated TV channels to pipe down coverage criticizing Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and shut down at least one of the networks. Erdogan’s visit to Jeddah last year coincided with the closure of a Brotherhood satellite TV network named Mekameleen after eight years of broadcasting from Istanbul. 

Turkey also denied renewal of residency to members or those associated with the group in a bid to encourage them to leave, reportedly arrested some of the leaders, and is considering deporting many others asked for by the Egyptian president, perhaps to a third nation. It has also apparently decided to annul the memberships to Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party held by some Muslim Brotherhood members who are Turkish citizens.

These moves have helped resolve problems between Ankara and Riyadh—but also raised big questions about the future of the Muslim Brotherhood. As Turkey turns its back toward the group, what will become of the once most determined of oppositions in the Islamic political landscape? And, perhaps more important, what will become of opposition itself in the region? 

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. 

The London-based faction is widely referred to as the Munir faction, named after its previous chief, Ibrahim Munir, who died last year. It is now under the guidance of 78-year-old Salah Abdulhaq, who is, however, based in Istanbul. One of the Istanbul factions is led by Mahmoud Hussein, who has been trying to seize control of the resources and has been providing for the families of members in prison. The third faction goes by the name Current of Change Movement and is the more radical faction that believes in an armed revolution. “It doesn’t care about the organization itself, but more about the revolution and toppling the regime in Egypt,” Abdelrahman said. But it is far too small to be taken seriously, “with a few dozen members,”, he added. 

Abdelrahman said that according to his conversations with the members across factions, the London group has overall control while it leaves some room for Hussein’s faction in Istanbul. A fight over the welfare of families of its members struggling in Egypt could send a negative message to the group’s remaining supporters. As it is, Sisi’s crackdown and the inability of the leadership to remodel the group in accordance with the times has left the younger generation of Muslims in the Middle East disenchanted. “There is no recruitment in universities,” added Abdelrahman. 

The Muslim Brotherhood is going through an existential crisis and few believe it can come out of it unscathed. But there are some pockets of influence left. In Libya, the Government of National Accord is backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, and its members in the Syrian opposition, while in exile, are still alive and well. 

“Turkey has not put the screws on the Syrian Brotherhood in the same way,” as it has on Egyptian members of the group, said Aron Lund, a fellow of the Century Foundation and a Syria expert. “I suspect that the Brotherhood is too important an instrument in Turkey’s Syria policy to simply be discarded,” he told Foreign Policy via WhatsApp. “Still, if Damascus-Ankara rapprochement progresses, it seems possible that Syrian dissidents will face some form of pressure and restrictions.” 

Seifeddine Ferjani, a Tunisian who lived in exile in London since he was 10 after his father was forced to leave the country for being close to Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi, said the real problem for the Muslim world isn’t weakening of Muslim Brotherhood but a shrinking space for opposition groups. “There is a need for an opposition to voice popular discontent,” he said. 

The absence of a strong opposition could lead to “more uprisings,” he said. Future uprisings could usher in more chaos in the absence of a group like the Muslim Brotherhood that can act as a buffer between the public and the political system. For now, autocratic regimes have consolidated their grip on power—perhaps at the expense of the Muslim Brotherhood’s very survival.