The “Green Belt” project of the USA is known;
It was the strategy of the Washington administration to pit the political Islam movement against communist/secular movements in Muslim-populated countries in order to prevent the development of the Soviet bloc.
Thanks to this strategy, the extensions of the Muslim Brotherhood/Ikhwan movement, born in Egypt, in different countries, from Afghanistan to Pakistan, from North Africa to the Middle East, were supported. Thanks to the military administration established after the 1980 military coup, Turkey was not left out of this climate.
In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, the USA entered places in the Middle East and North Africa that it had never been able to enter before, by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood movement, sometimes directly and sometimes through the administrations of some countries in the region.
GREATER MIDDLE EAST PROJECT
The name was also given to this strategy;
As part of the “Greater Middle East Project”, the administrations of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya, Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia were overthrown. With the Syrian civil war, the administration of Bashar Assad became unable to move its arm.
It was ensured that American soldiers were deployed to Iraq and Syria, and pro-American forces in Libya were made a part of politics.
However, when the Muslim Brotherhood / Brotherhood, which was dominated in North Africa and the Middle East, tended to get out of control and intended to set up their own game, this time the operation to get rid of the Brotherhood began;
● The overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood administration in Egypt and the establishment of the American-backed Sisi regime,
● The Americans cut off aid to jihadist groups like a knife in Syria and gave the green light for Russia to enter the area.
● Ending ISIS,
● The marginalization of the Brotherhood in Libya,
● In Tunisia, the strict secular President’s absolutizing his powers with a constitutional coup and removing the phrase “the religion of the state is Islam” from the Tunisian Constitution,
●The end of the Imran Khan government in Pakistan by the parliament and the Constitutional Court is also the result of this operation.
ISRAEL’S LAST MILITARY OPERATION AND DEFINITIONING ISLAMIC JIHAD
It is an undeniable fact that Israel is the country that gains the most from the global “wings” of the Muslim Brotherhood/Ikhwan movement;
In this way, the Palestinian resistance movement was first divided into two. Mahmud Abbas, who prioritized politics over armed resistance in the West Bank, was dominated. The Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, was squeezed into Gaza.
The US administration’s move of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by the previous President Trump was the biggest blow to the Palestinian cause. The Arab world, on the other hand, did not oppose it, but in a sense “legitimized” the situation by normalizing relations with Israel at the same time. The AK Party government in Turkey showed the strongest reaction to this attitude of the USA at that time. As a result of the protests following the relocation of the American Embassy and Israel’s disproportionately violent suppression of them, diplomatic relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv were downgraded.
While Hamas is stuck in Gaza, the Islamic Jihad organization, another branch of the Brotherhood in Palestine, has recently started to mobilize in the West Bank, which Israel thinks it has “cleaned”. However, Israel’s reaction was not delayed. Last week, the Israeli armed forces launched an assassination campaign against the organization’s leaders. Interestingly, while Israeli forces were killing the leaders of Islamic Jihad one by one, Hamas remained speechless – perhaps out of satisfaction over the “enemy” overthrow of an opponent.
The resistance that Islamic Jihad tried to resurrect against the Israeli operation in Palestine was ended with a ceasefire agreement before it could begin with the intervention of Egypt under Sisi. The terms of the ceasefire agreement are interesting; According to Arab media reports, Islamic Jihad has pledged not to attack Israeli targets in exchange for the release of its two leaders in Israeli prisons. However, Israel has declared that it has not made any commitment to release these people. Egypt, which had concluded the ceasefire on this condition, fell into silence all of a sudden. The “deception” that is common in Islamic movements seems to have taken place here as well.
TURKEY-ISRAEL NORMALIZATION
The normalization of relations between Turkey and Israel also coincided with this period.
The AK Party government, in agreement with the coalition government in Israel, announced that they would appoint a mutual ambassador.
Israel’s conditions for normalizing relations included the “expulsion” of elements of Hamas and other Muslim Brotherhood/Brotherhood extension movements in Turkey. It is possible to interpret the critical decision of the Israeli administration to normalize with Ankara just before the early elections in the country, as “finding satisfactory” the developments in Turkey.
The Arab press had previously written and drawn that the AK Party government had neutralized the Muslim Brotherhood media in Turkey in the name of normalization with Egypt.
In addition to all these, the AK Party politicians almost “ignore” what is happening in Tunisia; Add the signals from the AK Party government to make peace with the Assad regime, determined to end the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Syria.
In the new era in international relations, the possibility of political Islam movements to be “actors” seems to disappear completely…