Istanbul meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood
- From a power project to a repositioning strategy
- Yemen, the translation of the meeting on the ground
- Attack on counterterrorism forces
- Sudan, the other side of the same road
- Europe in the circle of the rebound effect
While major European cities welcomed the New Year with strict security measures, fearing terrorist attacks, Istanbul hosted a highly sensitive meeting of leaders and networks linked to the Muslim Brotherhood organization, at a delicate regional moment marked by wars, state collapses, and the retreat of traditional political Islam projects.
According to information from specialized circles, the meeting was attended by representatives of branches and networks of the Muslim Brotherhood from Qatar, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Lebanon, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and Somalia, as well as organizational structures based in Europe, including what is known as the International Organization Office in London.
The importance of the meeting lies not only in the breadth of geographical representation, but also in its political timing, which raises serious questions about whether the organization is attempting to relaunch itself regionally through conflict scenarios, rather than through political channels that have failed or been closed to it.
From a power project to a repositioning strategy
Over the last decade, the Muslim Brotherhood organization has gone from being a “political alternative” to a movement that is besieged or excluded in most Arab countries. This setback did not lead to the disintegration of the network, but rather to a change in function: from attempting to gain direct access to power to acting as a flexible actor within crises, taking advantage of the fragility of states and armed conflicts.
In this context, the Istanbul meeting appears to be an attempt to re-coordinate roles between the various branches and to define priority scenarios, led by Yemen and Sudan, where the state remains weak, weapons are available, alliances are shifting, and where the organization enjoys Saudi military and political support.
Yemen, the translation of the meeting on the ground
This meeting cannot be separated from the acceleration of events in Yemen, particularly in Hadramaut. In the days leading up to and coinciding with the meeting, Hadramaut was the scene of a military escalation that included Saudi airstrikes against forces opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood and against strategic facilities and sites, as well as movements of Yemeni forces linked to the Brotherhood, with direct support from Saudi-backed forces.
This escalation is not interpreted solely as a local conflict, but as a practical example of the reintegration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the military arena, not as the bearers of a national project, but as an instrument in a broader power struggle aimed at breaking existing balances and weakening local forces that had accumulated independent power.
Attack on counterterrorism forces
The most serious aspect of the Yemeni situation is that this escalation has come at the expense of the southern forces, which in recent years have played a key role in the fight against terrorism, both against the Houthis and in the expulsion of Al Qaeda from Hadramaut in 2016, transforming Mukalla and its port into a safe zone for local and international trade.
Weakening these forces, or removing them from the equation of control, opens up a real security vacuum and recreates the same environment in which extremist organizations previously thrived, raising concerns that go beyond Yemen and affect regional security and international shipping.
Sudan, the other side of the same road
In Sudan, the situation is even more chaotic. The ongoing war has led to a large influx of weapons, with reports of open support for extremist militias operating under different names.
As in Yemen, the goal does not seem to be to build a stable authority, but rather to manage the chaos in a way that allows the return of politically expelled organizations, through the use of weapons and temporary alliances.
In this sense, Yemen and Sudan appear as two parallel scenarios within the same strategy: recycling political Islam within conflicts, not within the state.
Europe in the circle of the rebound effect
For Europe, this process is not far off. European countries that for decades allowed the activity of networks linked to the Muslim Brotherhood under charitable or civil labels are now facing a new security reality, in which restrictions are imposed on public celebrations and security resources are depleted in the face of fears of cross-border threats.
Observers believe that Europe's long-standing tolerance of the organization, without sufficient scrutiny of its network structure and transnational functions, has contributed to creating a gray area that ideological organizations are exploiting to reposition themselves, even when they are politically besieged in their countries of origin.
The Istanbul meeting cannot be treated as a mere organizational event, but as a sign of a strategic shift in the Muslim Brotherhood's actions: from attempting to govern to investing in chaos.
Yemen and Sudan are now the first testing grounds for this path, while Europe is once again faced with a key question:
Is it still safe to treat the Muslim Brotherhood as a political movement that can be “contained,” or is the cost of such tolerance already being paid in terms of security and stability within and outside the continent?