The Presence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Media Space of Turkey to Maintain Political Participation after the Events of the Arab Spring in Egypt

Abstract

After the collapse of the ongoing 2011–2013 policy, the Egyptian movement “Muslim Brotherhood” was banned in many countries of the world including some member countries of the League of Arab States (LAS): Syria, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and several others. On the contrary in Turkey which borders Syria the Brotherhood received support in particular access to the media and made it possible to continue to broadcast the ideas of the organization. This paper discusses the features of building the communication strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood in the period after the Arab Uprising and the overthrow of President Mohammad Morsi in Egypt on July 3, 2013. There is no political party in Turkey that would openly represent the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood, however, some members of the leading Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partısı; AKP), including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, provided the Brotherhood various forms of support including providing asylum to wanted members of the organization and access to the television and radio stations. Even though the Egyptian government charged the Brotherhood’s members in absentia, some of them were allowed to openly meet in Turkey and speak out against the Egyptian government. The Turkish media space has become a platform for broadcasting ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood, which found itself isolated in the Arab media and the Internet. The Turkish government has contributed to the development of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s outreach activities which is seen as a shift in the political participation not only of the organization itself but of Islamists in general. Taking advantage of the favorable political environment in Turkey the Brotherhood attempted to challenge the legitimacy of the new regime in Egypt by creating their own television channels on Turkish television as evidenced by the results of the content analysis presented in this paper.