Turkey, along with Qatar, is a major supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), bankrolling Brotherhood networks across Europe. Turkey openly declared its opposition to Egypt’s designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Last August, Turkey was found to be granting citizenship to dozens of the “most senior” Hamas jihadist operatives and their families. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The latest report that the Muslim Brotherhood is eyeing earthquake relief funds to promote its ideology in Turkey shouldn’t be surprising, since many in Turkey and other majority-Muslim states prioritize dawah above all else. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also stated about the Taliban that “Turkey has nothing that contradicts the Taliban’s beliefs.” The Taliban has long been accused of misappropriating billions in foreign aid for its own religious mission.
“Muslim Brotherhood eyes earthquake relief funds to promote its ideology in Turkey,” by Abdullah Bozkurt, Nordic Monitor, March 9, 2023:
The leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has set their sights on tapping multibillion-dollar earthquake relief funds that have poured in from domestic and foreign donors for victims of devastating February earthquakes in Turkey in order to construct buildings that would help promote the militant and politicized Islamist ideology.
The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which is rooted in political Islam and pursues pro-MB policies, has welcomed the MB’s overtures to establish itself in about a dozen provinces. A high-level MB delegation has held a series of talks with government officials, some at the cabinet level, in recent weeks, even visiting the quake zone and posing for pictures with locals.
A leading MB organization, the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), has been the public face in pitching projects developed by the MB to Turkish officials. The MB’s main goal is to set up an Islamic center, with mosques and schools, that would help promote its ideology in Turkey’s provinces in the south and southeast under the pretext of humanitarian relief and aid work.
The top leadership of the IUMS, which includes Sheikh Habib Salem Al-Saqqaf Al-Jifri, the IUMS president; Sheikh Ali al-Qaradaghi, the IUMS secretary-general; board member Sheikh Osama Al-Rifai; and Syrian opposition Grand Mufti Sheikh Wasef Ashour, also a board member, toured several provinces in the earthquake zone last week.
They were accompanied by the Turkish board members of the IUMS, Abdulvahap Ekinci and Ömer Faruk Korkmaz, who function as intermediaries between Turkish government officials and the MB global network. Ekinci works as Turkey representative of the IUMS and runs a Turkish version of the organization under the name Uluslararası Müslüman Alimler Derneği (UMAD), which is registered with Turkey’s Interior Ministry.
Korkmaz, also a board member for the al-Qaeda-linked Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri ve İnsani Yardım Vakfı, or IHH), serves as spokesperson of the the IUMS in Turkey. The IUMS’s main point man in Turkey is al-Qaradaghi, also known by the Turkified version of his name, Ali Karadaği. He has been awarded VIP protocol credentials by the Erdoğan government and often shows up at various government events, posing with Erdoğan and cabinet ministers…..
