Where do Egypt’s Muslim brotherhood flee to Turkey?
“The Brotherhood’s persecutors in Turkey are still looking for new safe havens, following changes in Turkish foreign policy that have put them at a crossroads”.
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The terrorist organization in Turkey has two main paths to escape the fate of its doomed members. A Turkish-Arab rapprochement looms, as Ankara is no longer the terrorist group’s safe destination.
The first course, according to experts, is to leave directly for permanent stations in European countries such as Britain, Canada and Sweden, which are the safest countries for Brotherhood members, especially those involved in terrorism cases.
Second, despite the unstable situation in these countries, it is necessary to resort to transit stations, such as Syria and Lebanon, but observers believe these countries may be forced to move the group’s funds out of Turkey.
Accordingly, both tracks reflect that the Brotherhood’s international organization continues to suffer successive defeats and that Ankara is determined to complete confidence-building measures with Arab countries through security coordination that does not lack understandings on the extradition of wanted terrorism suspects for whom judicial rulings have been issued.
Turbulent movements:
Turbulent movements are driving the Brotherhood to the inevitable, but this time to transit countries, according to researcher specializing in terrorist groups Amr Farouk.
Farouk said: “Countries such as Syria and Lebanon will be closer to Muslim Brotherhood temporary stations to arrange transition conditions, and more importantly, to move funds out of Turkey, but this does not mean permanent stability there”.
One of the main reasons the Brotherhood is reluctant to settle in these countries is that they are “conflict zones with flaming borders, in addition to their low economic conditions, since they are not the appropriate face for stability or investment”, he said.
A network of brokers from the Brotherhood scattered in Lebanon and Syria can be helped to smuggle money abroad, Farouk said. This comes in the context of Turkey’s recent instructions to Brotherhood members to stop funding any incitement projects and to regularize their financial situation.
This shows how Ankara is trying to take more correct measures towards the countries of the region, at a time when the major regional countries are exerting intense efforts to put pressure on Turkey to implement all demands that would cool the differences in the region.
Farouk believes that “the path of permanent transition will be to European countries such as Canada, Britain, Sweden, and Denmark, where these countries have not yet witnessed any restrictions on the Brotherhood“.
“There are a number of Turkish brothers who fled to Canada as political asylum in an intensive way in the past few months,” he said, noting that “there are Muslim Brotherhood members who are beginning to control leadership positions in Canada.”
He continued: “The Egyptian Brotherhood has been working since their flight to Turkey and they are working on expanding and spreading in several countries, in Europe and East Asia, by claiming the political asylum paper, to ensure that there are alternatives in case of leaving Turkey.”
Anticipation and anxiety:
Members of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group in Turkey are living in a state of great anticipation and anxiety because of the Egyptian-Turkish rapprochement during the past months, as well as the rapprochement with Arab countries, after Ankara demanded that they leave.
Over the past months, the members of the terrorist organization have sought other outlets outside Turkey that are secure and stable to settle in, after Turkey became severely strained by their interference in its internal affairs on the one hand, and by consolidating relations with major regional states on the other.
Egypt submitted a list of more than 60 Brotherhood leaders wanted in connection with terrorism cases through a bulletin compiled by the International Police Cooperation Office (INTERPOL). The list was issued to facilitate the arrest of the leaders.
Cairo periodically renews a bulletin on Interpol’s wanted lists and resends it to other countries as part of a continuous pressure to lift the cover of terrorism for fugitive Brotherhood members convicted of terrorist crimes.
With the recent disputes between the London and Ankara fronts intensifying, there is a new motive for the group’s members to change their residence in Turkey, especially with the latter’s successive accusations of financial and administrative corruption.
These accusations hit the organization’s infrastructure, which is no longer able to confront Turkey’s new policy of “zero problems”, the first of which will be their expulsion and extradition.
The terrorist organization’s two poles were at loggerheads in London and Turkey. The group split into two fronts, in Ankara headed by its former secretary, Mahmoud Hussein, and in London led by acting leader Ibrahim Munir.
