Turkish media is reporting that Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi has joined the US Muslim Brotherhood in declaring his support for Turkey on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the genocide of Armenians at the hands of the Turks during World War I. According a Daily Sabah report:
April 28, 2015 Prominent Muslim scholar Youssef al-Qaradawi has declared support for Turkey against “vicious claims” related to the events of 1915.
“There is an increasingly vicious campaign by some countries to pressure Turkey to take responsibility for the alleged Armenian genocide in 1915,” al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based chief of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, said in a statement on Monday.
“Attempts to distort history by exaggerating the number of Armenians killed in the 1915 incidents while downplaying the Ottoman fatalities will not bring Turkey’s supporters to succumb to these campaigns,” he said.
“History has not forgotten the victims of the Crusades, in which European armies committed the most brutal killings in Jerusalem and the Levant.”
Read the rest here.
The GMBDW reported last week that the US Muslim Brotherhood had issued a similar statement in support of Turkey that was being prominently displayed on the website of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A 2011 report report authored by the GMBDW editor concluded that since 2006, Turkey has become a new center for the Global Muslim Brotherhood. That report also detailed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ideological ties to the Global Muslim Brotherhood network, ties which date back to Erdogan’s affiliation in the 1970s with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a Saudi charity with known connections to extremist and terrorist groups. In November 2014, the GMBDW reported that Israel had arrested dozens of members of a Hamas terror network said to be funded and directed by Hamas officials in Turkey. The following month, we discussed a report titled “Antisemitism Hits New High In Turkey” that examines the starling rise in antisemitism that has accompanied the government of Turkish President Erdogan.
For a profile of Youssef Qaradawi, go here.