How Egypt's Brotherhood helped counter Turkey's coup attempt
Putting aside internal differences, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood united behind the Turkish government to thwart a coup attempt July 15, but questions remain about how important the group's support is for the Turkish president.
Egypt's outcast Muslim Brotherhood would be hard-pressed to find a country more welcoming than Turkey, and it appears the group's support might have played a role in quashing the July 15 attempted coup.
Ankara has not demanded the departure of any of the group’s leaders, as Qatar did in September 2014, nor has it opened numerous investigations into the extent of the Brotherhood's involvement in terrorism, as Britain has. Perhaps that is what drove the Brotherhood to call upon Egyptians and Syrians living in Turkey, as well as governments around the world and Turkish civil society, to defend Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after he was targeted by a coup launched by some members of the army.
On its official webpage, the Muslim Brotherhood posted a statement dated July 16 saying it would stand in solidarity with the Turkish people and their right to rally around their elected government. The statement also called upon “all free people around the world, peoples, civil society groups and elected governments to support democracy in every nation equally and reject backward [rebel] ideas.”
Different factions of the Brotherhood have converged around that same stance, despite some splits in the Brotherhood’s ranks. On one side stand the historic leaders of the Brotherhood, foremost among them interim leader Mahmoud Ezzat and Secretary-General Mahmoud Hussein, and what remains of the leadership's membership and the Shura Council, both of which fled abroad. On the other side stand some second-rank leaders and younger members of the Brotherhood.
