Despite his Rapprochement with Turkey, Al-Sisi Allows the Expansion of "Gulen's" Activities in Egypt

In an exceptional and alarming privacy, the "Gulen organization" of its Turkish opposition leader "Fethullah Gulen" continues to penetrate Egypt, through its media and commercial arms, with the support of the regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

For many years, the Gulen group succeeded in maintaining its bases in Egypt, and its activities continued for mainly political reasons, as well as economic ones.

This did not happen in other countries in the region, as they responded to Ankara's requests and closed down the "Gulen" institutions, or transferred their management to the Turkish authorities. The cooperation of other countries reached the point of facilitating the arrest of the charged ones and their extradition to their country.

As for Cairo, whose differences with Ankara escalated widely, after Al-Sisi’s military coup on July 3, 2013, it strongly supported Gulen, opened more doors for its institutions, hosted its satellite channels and allowed members of the organization to settle peacefully in Egypt”.

Ankara accuses the "Gulen" organization, which it describes as "Terrorist", of being behind the failed coup attempt in Turkey in the summer of 2016, and demands the return of the organization's leader who resides in Pennsylvania.

With the beginning of the Egyptian-Turkish rapprochement in the recent period, the debates rise once again about the nature of the presence of this group in Egypt. 

 

The Organization’s Institutions

Since the era of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the "Gulen" group has begun to spread its network, by establishing close relations with the official religious institutions inside Egypt.

Cairo was one of the important strategic bases in the Middle East and Africa, for the movement's activity, whose influence extends to nearly 170 countries.

On March 8, 2016, Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper, loyal to the Al-Sisi regime, published an interview with Turkish businessman Orhan Keskin, who is affiliated with the group and whose leader has sent him to Egypt since the late 1990s.

Orhan, who is the general coordinator of the “Ofok” educational company, which is responsible for establishing the “Salah al-Din” school chain in Egypt, said, “As part of the movement’s efforts to spread its goals inside Egypt, we sought to establish a chain of international schools in 1998 under the supervision of the Egyptian state, which began to expand. The chain is spread in the governorates of Cairo, Alexandria and Beni Suef.

He added, "These schools were founded at the initiative of Turkish businessmen belonging to the (Gülen) movement, and their first branches were inaugurated during the Mubarak period, and the series of branch expansions ended during the era of Al-Sisi."

Keskin continued, "Our activities inside Egypt enjoyed stability during the Mubarak era, then witnessed a period of ups and downs after the January 25, 2011 revolution, followed by concern over these activities during the term of the late President Mohamed Morsi, then stability returned again during Sisi," as he described it. .

Gulen's activities inside Egypt go beyond the chain of international schools that spread across 3 governorates, as it extends to a group of publishing houses, commercial companies and cultural centers for teaching Arabic, as well as associations for the care of Turkish students, members of Gulen organization, studying in Egyptian universities.

 

The Organization’s Mediatic Arm

One of the most important pillars of the "Gülen group" in Egypt is the "Media", that seeks to spread the teachings of its leader, and attacks his political and religious opponents alike. One of the most prominent and oldest media institutions of the movement inside the Egyptian country, "Dar Nile Publishing", which is one of the institutions affiliated with the group "Kenq" in Turkey, which includes 40 other specialized publishing houses.

It was established in Egypt in 2000, with the aim of printing "Fathullah Gulen" books, in addition to issuing the "Hira" magazine distributed in Egypt and the Middle East in a large proportion.

The editor-in-chief of "Hira'' magazine is Hani Raslan, a researcher at the Al-Ahram Strategic Center, while the Turkish Ismail Qayar is the managing editor, under the supervision of Isaac Engi, the movement's most important media official in Egypt.

Over the past years, the orientations of the "Gulen organization" have united with the Al-Sisi regime. The aim of both was attacking the president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the rule of "Justice and Development" in Turkey.

In order to attain this goal end, the group established the “Dogruso” website, which means “The truth” in Turkish, and it became the most prominent Turkish-language website for the organization inside Egypt.

The movement was not fully satisfied with that website, so it established the website "Turkey Now" in its Arabic version to attack President Erdogan and his party.

Both of the websites belong to the "Al-Madar" company, headed by the Egyptian broadcaster, who is close to the security services, Nashat al-Daihi, and who has a special relationship with "Fethullah Gulen" after he gave a television interview with him on September 28, 2019, from his self-imposed exile in the United States.

Why Egypt?

On December 12, 2017, Egyptian researcher George Fahmy at the "Malcolm Kerr - Carnegie Center for Middle Eastern Studies" published a research paper on the "Gülen group" and its impact on the regional environment, specifically Egypt.

Fahmy said: "They (Gulen group) are continuing to expand all their activities amidst these conflicts surrounding the Middle East from all over," stressing "their quest to organize a center of polarization inside Egypt that attracts the sheikh's followers to introduce his ideological line, as well as define the relationship with the regime, against Erdogan".

Fahmy attributed the reason for the relationship between Egypt and the "Gulen organization" to the similarity of experiences in the political climate, explaining that the "Gulen movement" was clearly dissatisfied with the rise of political Islam with the era of Necmettin Erbakan in the eighties and nineties.

He added, "This can be traced back to the idea of ​​material interests, and their fear that the state will be antagonized for fear of the influence of political Islam, which will result in the overthrow of all the gains they have achieved in the social field."

The Egyptian researcher likened the movement to a "Sharia Society" that distances itself from politics, so it shares with the Egyptian regime what he called hostility and hatred of "political Islam", as well as strong animosity with Erdogan, former member of Erbakan’s current. Noteworthy, Erbakan is the first leader of the Islamic movement in Turkey.

Fahmy overlooked the involvement of the "Gulen" group in the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016, which killed dozens of civilians, and almost destroyed the Turkish democratic experience.

Since that time, the Turkish state has launched a fierce security campaign against the group's headquarters and its members inland and outland, and demanded from various countries, led by the United States, to hand over the charged members, the most important of whom is the organization’s leader Fethullah Gulen.

During intermittent periods, the Al-Sisi regime's media hinted at the possibility of hosting "Gulen" in Egypt, due to the presence of a large number of institutions and people affiliated with his organization, which angers Ankara.