Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to demonstrate his long-standing support for clerics affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, despite ongoing efforts to improve relations with regional powers that have labeled the organization a terrorist organization.
On August 28, 2025, Erdogan hosted the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) at the Hayreddin Pasha mansion in Istanbul. The meeting was attended by Ali Erbaş, head of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), and Mehmet Görmez, president of the Islamic Thought Foundation and the Institute of Islamic Thought. The IUMS delegation was in Turkey to participate in a conference on Gaza, which was co-organized with the state-backed Islamic Thought Foundation of Turkey.
The event brought together 150 Islamic scholars from 50 countries and highlighted Ankara’s continued role as a meeting point for religious leaders aligned with Erdogan’s political stance in the Islamic world. Erdogan’s relationship with the IUMS is long and deep and has been evident at key political moments.
A notable example was ahead of the 2023 presidential election, when the IUMS published a statement signed by 55 scholars from across the Islamic world, calling on Muslims to support Erdogan at the polls, presenting his election as a global Islamic duty.
Citing verses from the Quran, the scholars argued that Erdogan’s leadership had strengthened the rights and freedoms of Muslims in Turkey and beyond. The message emphasized lifting the ban on the Islamic headscarf, expanding Quranic education, and restoring Islamic values to public life.
The statement also highlighted Turkey’s rise as a regional power under Erdogan, highlighting achievements in the fields of health, defense, and technology, including the development of drones and electric vehicles. This support circulated widely in religious and political circles.
Despite intense pressure from regional rivals, Erdogan has not distanced himself from groups and individuals associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
On September 10, 2023, he received at the presidential palace in Ankara a delegation led by Oussama Jammal, secretary general of the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) and a prominent figure associated with the Brotherhood in the United States.
During the meeting, Erdogan stressed the importance of unity of the global Muslim community (Ummah) in the face of Islamophobia and tolerance. He also sought the USCMO’s support against what he described as hostile lobbying activities in the United States, while expressing hope for stronger cooperation with the Turkish population in America.
Muslim Brotherhood Ties
These contacts reflect Erdogan’s effort to maintain ties with networks linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, at a time when Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia continue to consider the organization a terrorist organization.
At the same time, Ankara has moved to normalize relations with these countries, reopening trade channels and restoring diplomatic contacts after years of tension. Erdogan’s engagement with Brotherhood-linked groups followed a period of adjustment in Turkey’s strategy in the region.
After years of hostility with Cairo, Ankara sought rapprochement by restricting the activities of exiled Brotherhood members who had settled in Istanbul after the overthrow of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
Following Egyptian demands, several television channels operated in Istanbul by Brotherhood figures were closed or severely curtailed. Some prominent Brotherhood figures were also asked to leave Turkey and moved to other countries in the region. These measures were interpreted as a sign of Ankara’s willingness to mend ties with Cairo.
However, Erdogan has since balanced these concessions with symbolic but substantive moves to support scholars associated with the Brotherhood. Observers believe his meetings with the IUMS and other clerics are part of this strategic balance, aimed at maintaining his authority among Islamic movements while keeping channels open with regional governments.
The IUMS, which works closely with Erdogan and has ideological ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, attracted international attention earlier in 2025 when it issued a sweeping religious opinion on the conflict in Gaza. On April 4, IUMS President Ali al-Qaradaghi, also known in Turkey as Ali Karadagi, declared that the situation in Gaza constituted genocide.
The fatwa called on Muslim states to mobilize militarily and economically in defense of the Palestinians.
Erdogan’s continued association with the IUMS and similar networks coincides with his use of the Diyanet as a tool for external projection. The Directorate of Religious Affairs has played a central role in hosting delegations, organizing events, and disseminating messages that align with Erdogan’s vision of Muslim solidarity.
By hosting high-profile gatherings of religious scholars, Erdogan is bolstering his image as a leader of the global Muslim community. Such events are aimed both at home and abroad, allowing him to showcase his relationships with influential clerics while continuing diplomatic overtures to governments that view the Muslim Brotherhood with suspicion.
Erdogan’s dual approach underscores the complexity of Turkish foreign policy today. While seeking closer relations with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, Ankara continues to offer platforms to scholars and institutions linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
This strategy allows Erdogan to maintain his reputation among Islamist networks while avoiding a complete break with regional partners.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Dark Plan for Christian Cities
If anything, Europe is being conquered, as there are already neighborhoods in major cities where the police no longer enter and the locals are abandoning their homes, according to the well-known Israeli analyst Shay Gal. Specifically, according to Gal, “Europe is being conquered. Already today there are neighborhoods in major cities where the police no longer enter and the locals are abandoning their homes.”
One can still travel the continent without noticing the phenomenon and conclude—as much of Europe’s leadership has—that the real problem is Israel and not the millions of residents in their own backyard who despise their culture, their faith, their history, and the great ideas born in their academies.
During my recent visit to Europe, I was reminded of the German philosopher Oswald Spengler’s century-old book, The Decline of the West. In it, he described the rise and fall of ancient civilizations, warning that the same fate awaited the modern West.
A society that begins to question even the need to bring children into the world, Spengler wrote, is a society that is marking its end. Today, Europe is indeed an aging continent with few children, except for immigrants who take full advantage of generous child benefits and hospitality.
Spengler also predicted that at the end of every civilization’s decline, “the fellah” (peasant/commoner) awaits. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who died three years ago, issued a religious decree in 2003 to encourage his followers in what he called the land of the infidels in Europe. He declared: “The signs of salvation are as clear as the sun. The future belongs to Islam, and this religion of Allah will triumph over all others.”
Qaradawi cited a tradition that one of the signs of redemption would be the conquest of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), followed by the conquest of Rome.
“Constantinople was conquered in 1453 by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, son of Murad. Now only Rome remains, and that is what we desire and believe in. The meaning is clear: Islam will return to Europe again as a conqueror and victor, having been twice expelled. I believe that this conquest will not be by the sword, but through the preaching and dissemination of Islamic ideology… until Islam embraces East and West (i.e. the entire world).”
For almost a thousand years, Constantinople was the capital of Eastern Christianity, the Byzantine Empire, before it became Muslim.
Rome, as the seat of Western Christianity, has even greater symbolic weight, representing the entire Western civilization, whose great cities Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood dream of conquering. Qaradawi was referring to the two occasions when Islam was repelled in Europe.
The first was at the Battle of Tours on 10 October 732, when Charles Martel (the Sphyrocrat) halted the Muslim advance and pushed them back over the Pyrenees.
The second was at the Gates of Vienna, almost a thousand years later, on 12 September 1683, when the army of the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Poland defeated the Ottoman forces of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha on the Kahlenberg hill.
They have a long memory
According to Gal, Muslims have a long memory. They never abandoned Al-Andalus, Muslim Spain, even though today the Spanish government imagines it can buy peace by sacrificing the Jews, as it did in the 15th century.
Madrid now plans to recognize a Palestinian terrorist state that exists only in Spain’s imagination, hoping that Muslims will be satisfied. They will not be satisfied. They should read Qaradawi.
France has forgotten the legacy of Charles Martel. President Emmanuel Macron is now trying to demonstrate independence from US President Donald Trump by bashing Israel and promoting the recognition of a Palestinian state. Independence Day, Macron seems to be hinting, will be October 7.
Like his predecessors in the 1930s, Macron is blind to the dangers on his doorstep, failing to see the stark reality: a Palestinian state already exists in Paris and other French cities, long under the control of Muslim immigrants.
Many Arab countries have banned the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. In Europe, however, it operates freely, undermining democratic and liberal foundations.
It also acts as a major instigator against Israel and Jews. Here is an urgent measure to save Europe: outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the European Union.”
