Muslim Brotherhood weaker than ever

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has been banned and designated a terrorist group by a court ruling since 2013 for its involvement in terrorist activities that threatened Egypt’s national security.

The Muslim Brotherhood is currently divided into two rival factions, one based in London and the other in Istanbul.

In a post on X, Brotherhood activist Amr Abdel-Hadi said President Al-Sisi’s visit to Turkey offered a chance for reconciliation between the group and the Egyptian presidency.

“Muslim Brotherhood officials believe that Turkey is a friendly country and that its leaders can use Al-Sisi’s visit to urge him to accept the group’s offer of reconciliation,” wrote Abdel-Hadi.

Official Egyptian statements about the one-day visit to Turkey made no mention of the Brotherhood’s offer. The president’s office instead said that talks between Al-Sisi and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan had focused on economic cooperation and raising the relationship between the two countries to the strategic level.

Former Muslim Brotherhood activist Abdel-Gelil Al-Sharnoubi said that “the fact that thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members are living in Turkey and were using television channels there to attack President Al-Sisi’s government strained relations between Cairo and Ankara for 10 years.”

“Recently, though, with Turkey adopting a pragmatic approach to its relations with Egypt, Brotherhood leaders are feeling the pinch and hope reconciliation with the Egyptian presidency might offer a way out of their current crisis.”

“The group is facing problems with Arab governments in Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates as well as Egypt and appears to think reconciliation could turn a new page and help it restore its influence. But most Arab states do not trust the Muslim Brotherhood. They accuse it of using the Arab Spring revolutions to serve its own interests and ideological agenda.”

Al-Sharnoubi believes the Brotherhood’s sudden switch to reconciliation rhetoric is simply a “tactic” that it hopes might secure the release of its members and does not represent a radical change or revisionist policy.

The initiative was sharply criticised by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Istanbul office led by Mahmoud Hussein which described the call as “a betrayal of the group and its members” and a bid by Al-Gazzar’s London-based faction to assert leadership of the group.

Fearing a backlash from the Turkish authorities, the Brotherhood’s Istanbul office was noticeably silent on President Al-Sisi’s visit to Ankara. Al-Chark, a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated TV channel broadcasting from Istanbul, did however describe Al-Sisi’s visit as “historic” and a reflection of the new atmosphere of reconciliation between the two countries.

Al-Ahram analyst Hisham Al-Naggar believes Al-Sisi’s visit to Turkey caught the Muslim Brotherhood on the back foot.