Current Trends in ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY

CT 25 repaginate.qxp_Layout 1 2020-01-30 5:23 PM Page 1 Current Trends IN ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY VOLUME 25 February, 2020 ■ WHERE WILL ERDOGAN’S REVOLUTION STOP? Suleyman Ozeren, Suat Cubukcu, and Matthew Bastug ■ THE SYRIA EFFECT: AL-QAEDA FRACTURES Charles Lister ■ THE ORIGINS OF BOKO HARAM—AND WHY IT MATTERS Bulama Bukarti ■ EDUCATOR OF THE FAITHFUL: THE POWER OF MOROCCAN ISLAM Bradley Davis ■ THE CO-OPTATION OF ISLAM IN RUSSIA Rebecca Fradkin ■ DEPLOYING SOCIAL MEDIA TO EMPOWER IRANIAN WOMEN: AN INTERVIEW WITH MASIH ALINEJAD Lela Gilbert Hudson Institute Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World CT 25 repaginate.qxp_Layout 1 2020-01-30 5:23 PM Page 2 CT 25 repaginate.qxp_Layout 1 2020-01-30 5:23 PM Page 3 CT 25 repaginate.qxp_Layout 1 2020-01-30 5:23 PM Page 4 CT 25 repaginate.qxp_Layout 1 2020-01-30 5:23 PM Page 1 Current Trends IN ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY VOLUME 25 Edited by Hillel Fradkin, Husain Haqqani, and Eric Brown Hudson Institute Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World CT 25 repaginate.qxp_Layout 1 2020-01-30 5:23 PM Page 2 ©2020 Hudson Institute, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 1940-834X For more information about obtaining additional copies of this or other Hudson Institute publications, please visit Hudson’s website at www.hudson.org/bookstore or call toll free: 1-888-554-1325. ABOUT HUDSON INSTITUTE Hudson Institute is a nonpartisan, independent policy research organization dedicated to innova- tive research and analysis that promotes global security, prosperity, and freedom. Founded in 1961 by strategist Herman Kahn, Hudson Institute challenges conventional thinking and helps man- age strategic transitions to the future through interdisciplinary studies in defense, international relations, economics, health care, technology, culture, and law. With offices in Washington and New York, Hud son seeks to guide public policymakers and global leaders in government and business through a vigorous program of publications, conferences, policy briefings, and recommendations. Hudson Institute is a 501(c)(3) organization financed by tax-deductible contributions from private individuals, corporations, foundations, and by government grants. Visit www.hudson.org for more information. ABOUT THE CENTER ON ISLAM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE FUTURE OF THE MUSLIM WORLD Hudson Institute’s Center on Islam conducts a wide-ranging program of research and analysis ad- dressed to the political, religious, social, and other dynamics within majority Muslim countries and Muslim populations around the world. A principal focus of the Center’s work is the ideological dy- namic within Islam and the connected issue of how this political and religious debate impacts both Islamic radicalism and the Muslim search for moderate and democratic alternatives. Through its research, which includes collaboration with partners throughout the Muslim world and elsewhere, the Center aims to contribute to the development of effective policy options and strategies to win the worldwide struggle against radical Islam. For more information, visit www.CurrentTrends.org CT 25 repaginate.qxp_Layout 1 2020-01-30 5:23 PM Page 3 Contents Where Will Erdogan’s Revolution Stop? / 5 Suleyman Ozeren, Suat Cubukcu, and Matthew Bastug The Syria Effect: Al-Qaeda Fractures / 49 Charles Lister The Origins of Boko Haram—And Why It Matters Bulama Bukarti / 69 Educator of the Faithful: The Power of Moroccan Islam Bradley Davis / 89 The Co-optation of Islam in Russia Rebecca Fradkin / 116 Deploying Social Media to Empower Iranian Women: An Interview with Masih Alinejad Lela Gilbert /149 CURRENT TRENDS IN ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY / VOL. 25 ■ 3 CT 25 repaginate.qxp_Layout 1 2020-01-30 5:23 PM Page 4 CT 25 repaginate.qxp_Layout 1 2020-01-30 5:23 PM Page 5 Where Will Erdogan’s Revolution Stop? By Suleyman Ozeren, Suat Cubukcu, and Matthew Bastug N RECENT YEARS, TURKEY HAS BEEN UNDERGOING A DRAMATIC SOCIO-POLI- tical transformation. The country’s constitution and system of governance have been formally changed from a parliamentary democracy to a pres- idential system that grants extensive power to the autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Along the way, the president and his ruling Justice Iand Development Party (AKP) have pushed through sweeping reforms of the ju- diciary, military, national police, media, and Directorate of Religious Affairs, which have included purging their political opponents from these institutions and replacing them with party loyalists. This has enhanced the AKP regime’s overall power and bolstered its political and ideological agenda. These far-reaching changes in Turkish internal politics have also manifested in the country’s foreign policy, which was traditionally Western-oriented and used to prioritize strong relations with Europe and the United States. Instead, Erdogan has dragged the country in a different direction. He has significantly improved ties and pursued cooperation with the revolutionary Islamist regime in Iran and also with Russia.1 Meantime, since the 2011 Arab Spring and the Middle Eastern turmoil and wars that ensued, the AKP regime has attempted to enlarge its region- al political and military influence—including by backing or directly sponsoring WHERE WILL ERDOGAN'S REVOLUTION STOP? ■ 5 CT 25 repaginate.qxp_Layout 1 2020-01-30 5:23 PM Page 6 various non-state Islamist actors in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Most recently, during the Turkish military incursion into northeastern Syria, Turkish soldiers crossed the Syrian border along with the Free Syrian Army, which consists of several fac- tions of known jihadist groups. This ongoing transformation that the AKP regime is pursuing in Turkish society and foreign relations is fundamentally revolutionary—it has aimed to subvert nearly a century of Turkish republican institutions, practices, and pro-Western and civil-secular values. In this, Erdogan and the movement that supports him have clearly taken some inspiration from the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. This paper aims to assess the ongoing “revolution” in Turkey and its change from a pro-Western republic to an autocracy that is, according to AKP officials, emphat- ically “pro-Islamic.” The paper looks at how the Iranian revolutionary model has impacted the Erdogan regime’s sympathies, ideology, and tactics, and what this has meant both for Turkey’s political life and its external conduct—including its support for Islamist extremism. From Political Islam to Islamist Autocracy TURKEY’S RULING JUSTICE AND DEVELOPMENT PARTY (AKP) OFFICIALLY IDENTIFIES itself as a conservative democratic party with an Islamic identity. However, par- ticularly over the last six years, the party has pursued policies and taken actions that are more autocratic, Islamist and also revolutionary in nature. Among other things, the Erdogan regime has used its power and control of the state apparatus to attempt to transform Turkish government and society for its own gain, including the advancement of its ideological agenda.2 When the AKP first came to power in 2002 under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he and his conservative party colleagues tried to cloak their political background as members of the Turkish Islamist movement in new pro-democracy narratives. Although most of the AKP’s founders had roots in the National Outlook movement—i.e., the Milli Gorus, a political Islamist organization created in the 1970s by Necmettin Erbakan—Erdogan claimed the new AKP had embraced democracy and taken off “their National Outlook shirt.”3 In fact, AKP’s principal founders had been members of Erbakan’s banned Islamist-oriented Welfare 6 ■ CURRENT TRENDS IN ISLAMIST IDEOLOGY / VOL. 25 CT 25 repaginate.qxp_Layout 1 2020-01-30 5:23 PM Page 7 Party, which functioned as a grassroots Islamic organization and party with the goal of establishing an “Islamic” society and government in Turkey.4 Because of this, many Turkish observers were suspicious of the early AKP, and unconvinced by the party’s pro-democracy rhetoric. In those early days, many Turks questioned whether the party had a “hidden agenda” and had put on a “pro-democracy shirt” only to conceal its true ambitions. Indeed, as the AKP has grown more powerful, it has become more authoritarian and revealed its revolutionary agenda. When Erbakan’s Welfare Party won the general election in 1995, it was the first Islam-based party to come to power since the establishment of the secularist Turk- ish Republic in 1923. Erbakan had been deeply influenced by Sunni revivalists like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement and, more importantly, the 1979 Khomeinist revolution in Iran. Pan-Islamism and anti-Westernism were the two defining themes of his political program.5 In its founding manifesto, the Welfare Party distinguished Turkish society into two groups—on one side were the members of the National Outlook, and on the other were the “imitators” (taklitciler) who emulated the West and betrayed the truly “national” and “Islamic” norms and values of Turkey. This core ideological distinction infused virtually everything the party did and said. Erbakan strongly criticized the post-1991 global order and its neoliberal institutions. In their place, he championed the creation of an alternative Islamic order, one that Turkey itself would lead, and which included new and exclusively Mus- lim organizations that would deal with the Muslim World’s economic, political, and security affairs.6 He called the European Union a “Christian Club” and advocat- ed “for the establishment of a Muslim customs union, an Islamic NATO, an Islamic United Nations, as well as a single Islamic currency.”7 As an alternative to the G-7, Erbakan created the “Developing 8” (D-8) organization of Muslim-majority countries which, importantly, included the revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran —a country that Erbakan deeply admired.8 At home, his government proactively supported the growth of “Islamic” businesses—i.e., companies whose owners had close relations with the Welfare Party or were ideologically affiliated with the National Outlook movement.

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