The New Spirit of Islamism: Interactions between AKP, Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Tunisia’s Ennahda and Turkiye’s AKP have enjoyed close relations going back decades. Understanding the dynamics and nature of these relations can be somewhat complex, as research into these movements by journalists, analysts and academics is often coloured by what they think of Islamism broadly, which is often fused together with things like the war on terror, concerns about subversion of national identity and fears of radical transformation of societies such as those witnessed after the 1979 Iranian revolution, or Daesh after seizing control of parts of Iraq and Syria between 2014-2017. This can lead to some very poor analysis of Islamism, in general, and Islamists, in particular. However, many scholars have been pushing back against these simplified notions and have attempted to understand different Islamist movements through the nuances and contexts in which they exist.

There is now a rich body of scholarship to work from and Ezgi Basaran’s new book, The New Spirit of Islamism: Interactions between AKP, Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood attempts to explore the evolving relationship between three key Islamist movements which have shaped the Middle East and North Africa.

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A key observation Basaran makes about Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Tunisia’s Ennahda and Turkiye’s AKP is ‘They do not position themselves in direct opposition to Western ideals or institutions; rather they are seen as ‘constituting a part of the West’s ideological diversity’…Their priority lies in cultivating an image of success, even if it requires diluting Islamism main credos.’ She cautions that each movement is reflecting and working within their own local contexts and they are very much invested in their respective national politics, but that they also look to each other to learn the dos and don’ts of building governance. They have deeply influenced one another but act independently of each other and make decisions about what their politics and policies ought to be, based on their own position within their country’s politics.

This is an important point, as in trying to understand the relationship between different Islamist movements, we have to be careful about over-universalising them or assuming what is true of one movement must also be true of the other. Basaran carried out interviews with different activists from the AKP, Ennahda and Muslim Brotherhood to try and build up a picture of what these transnational ties mean and look like.

The notion of success, meaning pursuing economic and political power and how effectively it is achieved, is a key driver of the influence the three Islamist movements have over one another. There is this notion of the Turkish success story influencing the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda, who seek to adapt that perceived success to the Egyptian and Tunisian contexts. Much like the AKP, both the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda have undergone evolutions away from trying to create an Islamic order based on Shariah law and moral codes, argues Basaran, not because they do not still personally believe in the ideal, per se, but because they discovered the road was blocked, thus religious political emphasis needed to be shifted elsewhere while adoption of neo-liberalism, nationalism and gaining power needed to be the core objective.

While this is what happened after the 2011 Arab Spring, it would be wrong to assume that it was a one-way street in terms of influence. Indeed, Turkish Islamism was deeply influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda Party. Indeed, as Rached Ghannouchi remarked and quoted in the book: “Seven of my books have been translated into Turkish and are very well known. I was walking down the street in Istanbul’s Fatih district one day when a group of young people approached me and paid their respects. My friend, Loutfi, was with me at the time, and he joked that if you run for office in Turkey, you’d have a good chance of winning.” Ghannouchi was deeply influential for the founders of the AKP. His book on public liberties in the Islamic state was translated into Turkish, three years after its initial publication in Arabic in the mid-90s and his subsequent works on women’s rights, secularism and democracy found keen audiences in Turkiye, especially among the upper echelons of the AKP. ‘The Turkish Model’, which would influence Islamist thinkers post-Arab Spring, was itself born partially as a result of the diffusion of ideas between the Ennahda and AKP. The model shifted the emphasis from being an Islamist party to being conservative Muslim democrats which, in turn, fed back into the Arab World. As Basaran’s interviews with Muslim Brotherhood members revealed, ‘the MB went beyond mere observation of the AKP’s model and actively engaged in learning from it for practical reasons.’

 The New Spirit of Islamism usefully contributes to our understanding of Islamist politics by demonstrating how influence among different movements occurs and how local dynamics evolve the movements. The need to prove you can govern and the realisation that society is diverse and made up of different actors, forced the AKP, the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda to undergo a transformation with differing results and outcome. The New Spirit of Islamism is an intriguing text to think through, and with, in making sense of the dynamics of Islamist politics in the MENA region.

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