Serdar Turgut, a columnist for pro-government daily Habertürk, claimed that the U.S. is preparing to declare the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) as a terrorist group.
Turgut said that henceforth plenty of news against Turkey would be presented to U.S. President Donald Trump.
Turgut said that Fred Fleitz, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton's chief of staff, works with an anti-Muslim cadre, "This new cadre is preparing to take some steps to declare the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group. It has been said for about a year that such a work has been, but now it is emphasised that it will happen soon together with this new cadre," said he.
"The national security advisory is the position where the intelligence from every unit in the American administration comes. The adviser prepares a report from the daily intelligence to present to the president. Fleitz is now in his new position to determine which part of the intelligence Bolton will see. We can be sure that henceforth, plenty of news against Turkey will be presented to Trump," wrote Turgut.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his AKP government have ideological ties to the Muslim Brotherhood network. Ankara under the AKP has pursued a foreign policy in line with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. Under the rule of AKP, İstanbul became a centre for Muslim Brotherhood political activity.
"Personally, I don’t consider the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organisation as it is not an armed group, but is in actual fact an ideological organisation," said Erdoğan in February when U.S. administration considered blacklisting the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation.
However, the U.S. administration does not seem to totally have given up Erdoğan before the presidential elections on June 24, given that Trump gave a gift to Erdoğan ahead of the upcoming elections by agreeing on a roadmap for the northern Syrian town of Manbij.
"I think the Manbij issue was important to Erdoğan for the elections. In a way, United States gave him a gift. So this is one thing he wanted. He finally got it," Henri Barkey, a CIA-linked expert on the Middle East, had said on June 5, during a panel organised by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
