Introduction:
Undoubtedly, the major geopolitical changes in the region, as well as our country, have been associated with the empowerment of the Democrat Party in the United States in many cases. The Democratic Party as an external factor has played a significant role in creating a free and open political space in Iran in 1952 and 1979, in “Arab Spring” in 2011 in Egypt, and also the rise of the monopolist government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq. We all can still remember the discontent of the Democratic Party in the United States over the suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt by General al-Sisi, and even the discontent Rex Tillerson who is Donald Trump’s First Secretary of State, from America’s lack of cooperation of with the reform movements the Islamic world and the countries of the region. The presence of a Democratic president in the White House this time may lead to the intensification of the “Muslim Brotherhood” movement.
With Joe Biden’s nearly certain victory, the “United States of America” is going to experience a period of Democrats, government. The Taliban are seeking complete control of power in Afghanistan. Turkey is struggling to achieve a greater political and military presence in the region. The Islamic Republic is grappling with economic and social crises in a decisive battle. And America’s allies in the region are concerned about its conservative political structures in the Middle East, are attempting superficial reforms accompanied by the suppression of intellectuals, academics, and the traditional clergy, and meanwhile, they are approaching Israel in fear of the Islamic Republic’s lack of commitment to international relations. All of the factors above can lead to widespread discontent and social-political movement in these countries.
In the present article, we discuss one of the possible scenarios soon, under the influence of Joe Biden’s presidency for the “Middle East” by taking the growing power of “Turkey” in the region into consideration. This approach can be titled “The Expanding Role of “Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood” in the Region in the Upcoming years”
“Turkey” but this time in the South Caucasus
Following Turkey’s overt and covert interference in the recent bloody conflict of “Nagorno-Karabakh War” which has ended with the complete superiority of Azerbaijan and Armenia on the other hand, has lost many territories that it practically controlled after the collapse of the Soviet Union, “Turkey” has once again shown its decisive role in regional conflicts. There has been some concerning news regarding the transfer of fundamentalist fighters active in the Syrian civil war to the region by “Turkey” and their participation in “Nagorno-Karabakh War”. This is neither the first nor the last presence of “Turkey” in regional conflicts which y is even extended to North Africa(Lybia ) and now to south causes. We will witness more actions of this kind in case “AK Parti” continues ruling.
What are Erdogan and the ruling “AK Parti” seeking with their political-military movements in Libya, Syria, and now in the Caucasus? Which direction are these movements heading to? And what kind of impact are they going to have on social movements and possible political movements in the region? And most importantly, what effect will they have on the struggle for liberalism and democracy of the Iranian people?
The present article aims to examine these issues.
What is the motivating discourse behind these activities?
These activities cannot and should not be limited to the inclinations of the ruling party leaders. In fact, the widespread mass support for the Ak party’s idea can be considered as a kind of mass mobilization to combine the widest parts of the population and the inhabitants of the most remote areas with modern institutions as bureaucracy and education and university, etc. The fact that this mobilization has made many Islamic fundamentalist tendencies to become active, does not refute our claim!
Because to modernize any society, we are faced with an extraordinary kind of eclectic forms between religious-traditional, thoughts values and modern institution, which definitely over time, it will act in favor of the modernization of supposed society. Considering this background and the according to many analysts’ claim, are the “Turks” and at the head of them “Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “seeking the revival of “Neo-Ottomanism”?
It is interesting and remarkable that the answer to this question is shared by many analysts in Islamic Iran and many American and European media, and they agree that yes, “Erdoğan” is under the illusion of power and sees himself as an Ottoman caliph.
The reason for the common wrong answer that was mentioned above is that both of the above analytical sources are afraid of facing a reality, and that is: the motivating intellectual discourse of the “Turks” for the military and political activities in the past years is strengthening the attitude of a kind of secular Islam, republican Islam and finally Islam based on the attitude of the Muslim Brotherhood. This version of Islam is perfectly against the traditional version that is in power In Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states.
This approach is very worrying and challenging for one of the most powerful countries in the region and the Islamic world, namely Saudi Arabia. In case this approach spreads from the Middle East countries to North Africa, it will disrupt many traditional geopolitical equations.
In addition in the case of spreading and promoting the ideas of the “Muslim Brotherhood” among the nations of the region that are religiously “Sunni” and not Shia, people of the region who is looking for a new approach to Islam undoubtedly will choose Turkey and not IRI.
40 years after the earthquake in Tehran! ” Islamic Revolution “, this time, but in a Turkey,s version
One of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s advisers recently said: “They tried to read their story to us for years, and now we have our own story to tell.” What did he mean? Who are they and what is their story?
I would prefer to say This statement is based on a kind of attitude of returning to their true self in contrast to the dominant socio-political and economic culture of the West!
It is self-evident that there are some signs of “ ‘Westoxification’– From Wikipedia by Jalal Al-Ahmad” or the views of “Ali Shariati” in this statement. And it can be said that what is happening in “Turkey” today looks similar to what created and caused the revolution in Iran 40 years ago, regarding the disappointment with the golden gates of the civilization of America and Europe.
Nowadays, we often hear that Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is seeking the reconstruction of the “Ottoman Empire”. Sometimes he is depicted as an Ottoman caliph and mocked. These efforts are being encouraged by some European and American media, as well as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and even from analysts close to Iranian fundamentalists supreme leader “Ali Khamenei “
For many of us Iranians, the mockery of the Turkish leader and his comparison to the Ottoman caliphs is reminiscent of the opposition and some of the Iranian people’s reactions towards “Islamic Republic” and “Khomeini” and the leaders of the system and the Islamic Revolution.
The opposition of IRI and even many of the leaders of the region and rival countries considered the Islamic Republic of Iran, and its leaders and leaders of the Islamic Revolution as a handful of illiterate and inexperienced mullahs who would soon be ousted from power by the Freedom Movement or “People’s Mojahedin” and veteran politicians of “National Front”. The opposition had also mocked and made jokes about them.
It is now 40 years since those days, the Islamic Republic has been able to maintain its power at the cost of destroying hundreds of billions of dollars of the country’s financial resources and destroying Iran’s water, soil, and nature, and executing and imprisoning thousands of Iranians. Also, by using the lack of USA power in the region and pursuing vigilant policies in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, it has brought its allies to power or kept them near power as forces ready to attack.
Our biggest chance as Iranians, the region, and the world was that the majority of the world’s Muslims are not Shiites but Sunnis. If this was not the case, and the minority of one hundred million Shiites had a larger population, no force could prevent the entry of the Islamic Revolution to many more regions.
The purpose of this introduction is to ask whether Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s claim of inclination to “neo-Ottomanism” and underestimating the capacity for progress and expansion of the “Ak Parti” revolution and even the ridicule and mockery of Turkish Muslim intellectuals, is similar to the mistake made in dealing with the “Islamic Revolution” of Iran?
Let us not forget that political Islam in “Turkey” does not have the shortcomings of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Most importantly, in terms of the majority of the Muslim population in the Middle East to North Africa, and even the Turkish-speaking Muslims of Central Asia:
- They are not Shiites, but Sunnis and have no conflict with Sunnis Muslims of Tukey. More than 90% of Muslim consider the shite as “Rafida”(The term is used contemporarily in a derogatory manner by some Sunni Muslims to refer to Shia Muslims on the grounds that Shia does not recognize the first three caliphs — Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman — as the legitimate successors of Muhammad. Shia believe Ali to be the first successor – from Wikipedia )
- The Turks, unlike the Iranians, have no ethnic conflicts with the Arabs. The conflict that the Iranians had with the Arabs dates back to the Arab invasion of Iran 1400 years ago. At the same time, until less than a hundred years ago, the Ottoman caliphs centered on today’s “Turkey”, have had the political center of the Islamic world.
The Ak Parti considers itself the revolution center in the Islamic world
If you pay attention to the literature of many media close to the ruling party in Turkey, you will understand that they talk about the ideology that governs their country, as a revolutionary discourse as opposed to the counter-revolutionary discourse in “Saudi Arabia”, “Egypt” and the countries bordering the Persian Gulf.
The experience of the unrealistic and mocking treatment towards the “Islamic Revolution”, teaches any political analyst and researcher that the empowerment of Muslims, who have also described themselves as “revolutionary”, should now be seen as a historical matter, not an accidental matter. In order to learn how to interact with “Sunni revolutionary Islam”, it should be analyzed and accepted as a fact that cannot be neglected or destroyed!
The fact that activists of the ruling party of Turkey call themselves “revolutionary” in the face of Saudi Arabia’s “Islam of the Caliphate” and so on, at the same time suggest another fact, which is that, in contrary to the claims of many Asian activists in American Think tanks, in this part of the world, the “revolutionary discourse” is still fascinating to many masses of people, and it is possible to expand and develop it in a wider range of political geography in the coming years.
“Recep Tayyip Erdoğan” has sworn to spread the thinking of the Muslim Brotherhood
After the overthrow of the government of “Mohamed Morsi”, which took place with the full cooperation of “Saudi Arabia”, while expressing great sorrow, ” Erdoğan” swore to work with all his might to bring the Muslim Brotherhood back to power. His approach to Qatar, which has provided educational centers and facilities to the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the establishment of a military base in that rich country where Sheikhs live, defending the government of “Fawad Sarraj” in Libya, which is a supporter of the “Muslim Brotherhood” movement, and the attempt to win over “Hamas’s Palestinian Movement”, all express an ideological commitment to the intellectual movement, of “Muslim Brotherhood”, and undermine the claim that current Turkish leaders have neo-Ottoman ideologies.
The feature of this type of thinking “republican Islam ” instead of Islam with the caliphate system, is a transition from Western-oriented Elitist Systems to mass mobilization-based and development-oriented systems. The expansion of Turkey’s influence with a tendency and propaganda of a kind of Islam without mullahs, secularism, and republicanism, while not having the weakness of the Islamic revolutionaries of Iran, which is being Shiite, is a serious challenge for the influence and presence of the Islamic Republic in the region and the Islamic world, and maybe in near future, it will challenge the regional presence of Islamic Republic.
One potential scenario after the definite selection of Joe Biden as President of the United States is the emergence of the axis of Turkey, Qatar, Afghanistan under the leadership of the Taliban and Libya with the ideas and thinking of the “Muslim Brotherhood”. This axis will be able to deal a serious blow to the “Islamic Revolution of Iran”. Also, it should not be overlooked that Turkey, in presenting itself as an ideal model of growth and development for many Islamic countries, has more possibilities and facilities compared to the “Islamic Republic of Iran “.
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