The Turkish Government has decided to withdraw the citizenship granted to the public leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahmoud Hussein, who leads the so-called „Brotherhood Front“ in Istanbul, to withdraw his and his wife’s passport for violating the regulatioms for their citizenship.
Sources close to the Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey revealed that the Turkish governments decision, followed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan‘s visit to Egypt a few days ago, to withdraw Hussein’s citizenship together with 50 other high-ranking members of the organization came after showing that they had manipulated the conditions under which they had acquired Turkish citizenship through property.
The Turkish government had passed a law in 2022 allowing citizenship to be granted for the purchase of property at a price of at least $400,000 or for the deposit of funds in Turkish banks, providing that property or deposits were not disposed of three years earlier, and in the case of the sale of the property only to Turkish citizens.
This law, which allowed tens of thousands of Arabs and foreigners to buy real estate, caused great anger among the Turkish opposition, which accused the government of insulting the Turkish citizenship by granting it for money in order to increase the number of votes of the ruling AKP Party, as well as granting exceptional nationalities to over 300,000 Syrians, according to official figures, and also granting exceptional nationalities to some leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt.
According to the media, the authorities informed Hussein of the decision to withdraw his citizenship without clarifying the reasons, and that there had been extensive contacts by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood with officials of the Turkish presidency and the ruling AKP to resolve the problem.
Since the start of the negotiations on normalization of relations with Egypt in 2021, culminating in Erdoğan’s visit to Cairo last week, the Turkish authorities have imposed restrictions on movement of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and prevented them from making any provocative statements through media against Egypt and the Gulf States. They have also imposed restrictions on channels that speak for the Muslim Brotherhood for almost 10 years, attacking the Egyptian political leadership and authorities and instigated violence.
These decisions cover more than 46 cases of withdrawal of citizenship of Muslim Brotherhood members due to cases of violating the Turkish citizenship laws.
There are several effects on the Muslim Brotherhood following the Turkish Egyptian rapprochement, and the ensuing one, where the Turkish Government has decided to reduce support for persons fleeing the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as public support for the group, including restricting the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey or reducing media coverage in support of them.
The future of the Muslim Brotherhood and its leaders in Turkey is critical, because of great convergence, demonstrated by the exodus of many to Britain and other European countries.
The Muslim Brotherhood has also begun to adjust its political and media strategies in response to this rapprochement, seeking international support in other regions or promoting activities in different locations.
The Turkish government‘s decisions on the future of the group came at a time when the group was deeply divided among its leaders and the resulting division between its leaders and major disagreements, leading to mutual accusations of treason and others.
It has become clear that the previous relations between the Turkish regime and the Muslim Brotherhood have become something of the past, as the page has been turned, and it has become one of the past.
To answer questions about the fate of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Turkey following the rapprochement between Cairo and Ankara, the answer would be “everything is stopped according to their reactions,” since in the event that these leaders deal with the matter calmly and without escalation, the Turkish government will deal with them with the same reaction, and in the event that they attempt to re-establish the situation, the response will be clear, from deportation and withdrawal of nationality and others.
On the group‘s bank accounts, reports were made of the freezing Turkish accounts of the Muslim Brotherhood and conditions were placed on every transfer made by persons belonging to the group.
Observers confirmed that, following their departure from Egypt after 2013, dozens of leaders and agents had established associations and companies in Turkey, obtained substantial funding and remittances from some states without control or embargo, which had contributed to the intensification of investments in the economic wing of the organization in Ankara, owing to the fact that the organization‘s funds had been the cause of the current conflict between the London and Istanbul fractions over the organization‘s leadership.
As the struggle between the two concurring Muslim Brotherhood fractions over the organization‘s funds continues, each of the conflicting parts will hold on to its own money and will never give it up.
The conflict has reached the stage of competing control over branches and regulatory offices at home and abroad, regional offices, companies, investment and financing quotas, and contributions and contributions to the Community.
This proves that the Muslim Brotherhood has severe problems due to differences, weak leadership and the lack of a fertile environment in which they coexist following the Turkish sanctions against the movement.
The internal fragrance of the Muslim Brotherhood is also likely to perpetuate the current division into a three-way quadripartite divide, with a fourth front led by one of the leaders responsible for working within Egypt as Mamduh el-Husseini (the secret guide), adding to the two fronts of Mahmoud Hussein, Ibrahim Munir and the General Bureau, which has been working as a parallel group so far.
This scenario seems to be excluded, because of the nature of the interrelationships between the Muslim Brotherhood of the interior and the one of the exterior, the method of organizational education, and the reliance of the members of the group within Egypt on funding that reaches them through the Muslim Brotherhood of the outside, so that separation from them and the formation of an independent front would amount to a dangerous and uncounted gambling.
The Brotherhood stands helpless in the face of the fragmentation of its internal entity, after decades of arguing with its leaders about its organizational strength and unity and its indissolubleness, and while the current fraternal differences and conflicts are not surprising in the exceptional circumstances of the Community, they are putting it in the face of the challenge of survival and difficult existence.
As its crisis escalates, the Muslim Brotherhood appears to be living the final phase of its life, the “geriatric phase,” which in essence has remained challenging, because that movement has carried the seeds of its demise since its inception, and it is not surprising to hear in the near future an announcement of the end of the Community after decades of existence.
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