The Al-Monitor news portal is reporting on an apparent falling out between leading Turkish Islamists and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The report begins:
There is a new theme these days in Turkey’s hard-core pro-Erdogan media: The unreliability of opinion leaders or activists who have led Turkey’s Islamist movement for decades, and who have also been strong supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Lately, some prominent Islamists have raised criticism about ‘corruption by power’ in the ruling circles. The Islamists also have criticized the pro-Erdogan propaganda machine, which intimidates, threatens and libels any critic of the president. Although all these Islamist critics used as friendly and respectful a tone as possible, they could not escape being labeled as disloyal or treacherous.
One dramatic example of this Islamist disenchantment with Erdoganism was a piece by Ismail Kilicarslan, a veteran pundit in Turkey’s Islamist movement, in the daily Yeni Safak. Titled ‘O Chief, we are so depressed,’ the piece was an emotional open letter to Erdogan — who is now commonly called ‘the Chief’ by his supporters. Kilicarslan listed a few recent examples of ‘immorality’ he saw in the rhetoric of some hard-core Erdoganists and noted that he feels ‘shame’ to be in the same camp with those people. He also said that he is sick of being called a traitor (or ‘crypto Gulenist’) from the ruling zealotry whenever he raises such complaints.
Erdogan naturally did not give any answer to this open letter, which went viral in social media. But the hard-core Erdoganists in question gave an answer: Kilicarslan’s dissent was just another example of how unreliable some of these Islamists are. They are arrogant people who don’t understand the value of Erdogan, and who do not appreciate the privileges they have ‘only thanks to Erdogan.’”
Read the rest here.
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 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.