The recent crisis between Qatar and the four other Arab countries Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, has seen a flurry of significant developments soon after Turkey and Iran intervened declaring their solidarity with Doha. The Turkish parliament was quick to approve legislation allowing Turkish troops to be deployed in Qatar and open a Turkish military base there. Before that, Iran announced that it was providing Qatar with enough food supplies starting with five plane loads.
Supportive Fatwas
The two states were keen on showing that one aspect of their support for Qatar was, from an Islamic perspective, based on a number of fatwas (religious edicts), issued by scholars backing Qatar, to ban the blockade on Qatar and declare that supporting it and standing in solidarity with it is a religious duty. This poses an important question about how effective this alliance can be on the way extremist currents or movements view Turkey and Iran, given, in particular, that several such movements are backing Qatar during the current crisis.
Within this context, it should be noted that it would not be possible, for now, to determine exactly the position of major religious movements towards the two states before their recent alliance without first shedding light on their previous views. The following positions can be presented as a general outline:
1- The Muslim Brotherhood is the only organization that maintains strong ties with both Iran and Turkey, despite its religious and sectarian disagreements with Iran and ideological differences with Turkey. This can be attributed to the group’s ideology that upholds utilitarianism, a doctrine that allows giving up of firm principles as long as such action serves interests.
The Brotherhood has been maintaining a strong relationship with Iran since the reign of Ayatollah Khomeini. The Muslim Brotherhood described khomeini, upon his death, as the leader who launched the Islamic revolution against the tyrants. However the mother organization’s position on Iran was also embraced by its branches. Fathi Yakan, a Brotherhood leader in Lebanon, stated, in 2009, that the schools of the Islamic renaissance are only three: the school of Hassan al-Banna (the group’s founder), the school of Sayyid Qutb (the group’s main theorist), and the school of Khomeini. The fact that to date this relationship continues to be strong can explain why the Brotherhood kept silent about Iran’s terrorist and subversive actions, including attacking the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in January 2016 and offensives in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Trojan Horse
The Brotherhood’s relationship with Turkey has been getting stronger day after day, since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power in 2002. It went through significant developments after revolutions broke out in several Arab countries, where Turkey backed the Brotherhood's branches in these countries based on its belief that they can be a “trojan horse” through which the glory of the Ottoman Empire can be revived. For its part, the Brotherhood’s leaders back Turkey’s positions and give them religious legitimacy. Most recently, leader of the Tunisian Ennahda Party Rached Ghannouchi gave a statement backing Turkey’s support for Qatar during the current crisis. Based on that, this relationship can be described as being more like a strategic alliance.
2- Al-Qaida. Although all jihadist organizations are enemies of Iran, due to religious/sectarian disagreement, al-Qaida violated this approach and established strong relations with Iran which has become one of the favorite countries for the organization’s leaders, such as Saif al-Adel, Yasin al-Suri and Abu Mohammad al-Masri, who took refuge in Iran in late 2001 after the Taliban regime collapsed in Afghanistan. Iran has always been keenly interested in maintaining this relationship and using it as a leverage to put pressure on some states in the region. This made al-Qaida abstain from targeting Iran and its interests. This was evidenced in documents found in the last hideout of the terror group’s chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The documents released by the United States after it killed bin Laden revealed that bin Laden asked al-Qaida commanders, in a series of letters, not to target Iran.
Suspicious
Just like all other jihadist groups, al-Qaida has always viewed Turkey as a secular state describing all Erdogan’s claims that Turkey is defending Islam as baseless. That is why the organization did not seek to establish relations with Turkey as it did with Iran.
Although there were open contacts with its branch in Syria, the organization has always been suspicious and concerns over such relationship because it does not trust the Turkish government. This, perhaps, is what prompted the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) to announce, on June 26, 2017, that it rejects Turkey’s deployment of troops in Idlib province, northern Syria, although such deployment was decided during peace talks held in Astana and Geneva.
3- Hardline salafist currents. The ideology of salafis drives and perpetuates their enmity to Iran along religious/sectarian lines. That is why they abstain from seeking rapprochement with Iran and even continue to launch ideological and media attacks. Iran recognizes this fact and continues to launch counter attacks.
Mutual Hatred
The salafi movement’s relationship with Turkey is largely "bad", because salafis consider Turkey as a secular state despite its current leaders’ claims that they advocate Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and other Islamic causes. That is why the movement does not maintain a relationship with Turkey. On the other hand, Turkey views the salafi movement as a danger to the Turkish model of Islam and rejects to have any relations with it. The situation can best be described as mutual hatred.
4- ISIS. Iran represents a high-profile enemy for ISIS due to their religious/sectarian disagreement. While al-Qaida ideology is based on enmity to the United States, ISIS’ idelogy is based on enmity to Iran and a need for targeting Shiites and Iranian interests. This is what drove ISIS’ spiritual founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to break off all ties with al-Qaida because al-Qaida leaders rejected such a position.
This was disclosed by ISIS’ former spokesman before he was killed in August 2016. He noted that, before the declaration of ISIS as an Islamic caliphate, the militants completely avoided targeting Iran in response to orders from al-Qaida which wanted to preserve its own interests and supply line within Iran. Moreover, despite this bitter enmity, the group did not carry out any terrorist attacks against Iran until June 2017, when it targeted the Iranian Parliament and the mausoleum of Khomeini. Therefore, the relationship between Iran and the group appears to be driven by this bitter enmity.
ISIS’ relationship with Turkey, was excellent at the beginning because the country represented the group’s lifeblood facilitating the passage of foreign fighters, arms supplies, medical services on the border as well as oil purchases. When this relationship surfaced, and international pressure mounted on Turkey to severe this relationship in late 2014, their ties transformed into intense hostility, in late June 2015 in particular, when military confrontations between the two sides broke out for the first time. This prompted ISIS to carry out terrorist attacks within Turkey. A deadly high profile attack was carried out on January 1, 2017 at a nightclub in Istanbul. Hostility between ISIS and Turkey has been escalating since then. ISIS’ statements keep describing Turkish soldiers as apostates.
Spreading Impacts
Qatar’s alliance with Turkey and Iran will reflect on extremist organization’s view of the two countries, due in particular to the support Qatar receives from a number of extremist movements. Hence, the key features of the shifts of these movements’ views can be specified as follows:
1- The Muslim Brotherhood’s Growing Relations with Ankara. It can be argued that the alliance is likely to strengthen the Brotherhood’s relations with both Iran and Turkey, especially because of the organization’s support for Qatar and its efforts to depict it an an alliance of the right against the wrong. The efforts are based on fatwas issued by individuals and organizations backing the Brotherhood such as the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS). Head of the IUMS cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, on June 8, 2017, issued a fatwa prohibiting the boycott of Qatar saying it is against Islamic sharia and that it is a religious duty to support Qatar and work to end the blockade imposed on it.
Hence, the Brotherhood will work on promoting its relations with both Turkey and Iran as it seeks to receive more support after it was designated as a terrorist organization.
2- Developments of al-Qaida’s operations in Yemen. Al-Qaida’s support for Qatar during the current crisis was voiced by some of its figures including Abdullah al-Muhaysini, Abu Hafs al-Mauritani and Abdul Hakim Belhaj. Moreover, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemen affiliate is known, expressed its support for Qatar in the June 6, 2017 issue of its Al-Masra digital weekly magazine. It can be said that this support can possibly impact al-Qaida’s positions on the two states, where it is likely to help promote its relationship with Iran and revive and expand their longstanding cooperation, given, in particular, the fact that this cooperation is long-standing and deep-rooted. On the other hand, this alliance can contribute towards easing off al-Qaida’s hardline position on Turkey.
3- Salafists’ position unchanging. The salafist movement’s position on Iran and Turkey is likely to remain unchanged despite their alliance with Qatar and wide sympathy with Qatar among some salafist groups. That is because a majority of salafist groups either support the countries of the boycott because they belong to Madkhalism, a strain of Islamist salafist thought based on the writings of Saudi scholar Rabee al-Madkhali, or are not concerned with the crisis because it views it as division and strife among Muslims that must be avoided. This indicates that alliances will not lead to changes in the positions of the Salafist movements on the two states.
4- ISIS’ enmity evidenced. Qatar’s alliance with Iran and Turkey is being depicted as an alliance that advocates Islamic causes, which led to a shift in the views of some religious movements about the two states. However, ISIS’ enmity to the states would not change because the group believes that this crisis is only a disagreement between infidel and disbelievers and that it is unconcerned with such crises, alliances or divisions.
Volatile Changes
In light of the above, it can be said that Qatar’s alliance with Turkey and Iran against the countries of the quartet countries can cause some changes to the positions of some movements. However, in the short term, these would not be radical changes with significant consequences. In the long term, such changes can possibly create a network of relations between the two states and organizations that support Qatar. Through such network, Qatar would receive more support from the two states, which portends an escalation of terrorist attacks in the future. Moreover, this will make it difficult to eliminate these organizations or reduce their terrorist activity.
