Report of Israeli Think-Tank on the Global Muslim Brotherhood

Consistent with ties between the current Turkish political establishment and the Global
Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey under the AKP government has pursued a foreign and
domestic policy agenda consistent with that <strong>of</strong> the global Brotherhood. According to
Turkish affairs analyst Soner Cagaptay:
The AKP was born out <strong>of</strong> the Welfare Party (RP), the motherboard <strong>of</strong> Turkish
Islamists since the 1980s. Islamism in Turkey, though traditionally nonviolent,
possesses six virulent characteristics; it is anti-Western, anti-Semitic, anti-
<strong>Israeli</strong>, anti-European, anti-democratic, and holds anti-secular sentiments, all
<strong>of</strong> which are adopted from the Muslim Brotherhood. 85
Cagaptay goes on to explain that the foreign policy views <strong>of</strong> the AKP and its leaders
are based on “solidarity with Islamist and anti-Western countries and movements.”
He writes:
AKP leader and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, along with his
government, believe in Samuel Huntington’s clash <strong>of</strong> civilizations -- only they
choose to oppose the West. The AKP’s vision as such is shaped by Turkey’s
philosopher-king, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who summarizes this
position in his opus “Strategic Depth,” in which he writes that “Turkey’s
traditionally good ties with the West ... are a form <strong>of</strong> alienation” and that the
AKP will correct the course <strong>of</strong> history, which has disenfranchised Muslims since
the collapse <strong>of</strong> the Ottoman Empire. Undoubtedly, the AKP’s “us versus them”
vision would not have had the same powerful resonance had they come to
power before September 11. Because those attacks defined a politically-charged
“Muslim world,” the AKP’s worldview has found fertile ground and has
changed not only Turkey itself, but also the nation’s role in foreign policy. 86
The State Department had warned as early as 2004 about the thinking <strong>of</strong> Erdogan’s
then-chief foreign policy advisor Davutoglu, an ally <strong>of</strong> Turkish President Abdullah
Gul, who it said was “lost in neo-Ottoman Islamist fantasies”, namely, that Turkey’s
role is to spread
Islam in Europe, “to take back Andalusia and avenge the defeat at the siege <strong>of</strong> Vienna in
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1683”, as one participant in a recent meeting at AKP’s main think tank put it.
By January 2010, a US State Department cable discussed what it called “Turkey’s new,
highly activist foreign policy” which it said
“unquestionably represents a transition not only from prior governments, but
also from the AKP regime before the Gaza/Davos events, and before the ascent
<strong>of</strong> Ahmet Davutoglu as Foreign Minister in April. 89
The cable concluded that the new AKP foreign policy was “driven by both a desire to
be more independently activist and by a more Islamic orientation.
Another State Department cable from 2006 attributed Prime Minister Erdogan’s
increasingly Islamist foreign policy to domestic considerations:
According to a broad range <strong>of</strong> our contacts, Erdogan reads minimally, mainly
the Islamist-leaning press. According to others with broad and deep contacts
throughout the establishment, Erdogan refuses to draw on the analyses <strong>of</strong> the
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A US State Department cable explains “Himself the grandson <strong>of</strong> an Ottoman soldier who fought in Gaza,
Davutoglu summed up the Davutoglu/AKP philosophy in an extraordinary speech in Sarajevo in late 2009
(REF A). His thesis: the Balkans, Caucasus, and Middle East were all better <strong>of</strong>f when under Ottoman control
or influence; peace and progress prevailed. Alas, the region has been ravaged by division and war ever since.
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