Turkey Denies Muslim Brotherhood TV Channels Being Broadcast From Turkey

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Egyptian media is reporting that Turkey has denied that Muslim Brotherhood affiliate TV channels are being broadcast from Turkey. According to an Ahram Online report:

February 12, 2015 Turkey’s foreign ministry has said that Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated channels are not being broadcast from Turkey, according to Egypt’s charge d’affairs in Istanbul. Turkish officials told Hussein El-Saharty that they did not issue permits to any channels that incite violence, Reuter`s Aswat Masriya reported.

Earlier this month the Egyptian foreign ministry issued an official complaint against ‘terrorist channels supporting the Muslim Brotherhood broadcasting from inside Turkish territories.’

El-Saharty told Aswat Masriya in an interview that the Turkish foreign ministry requested to meet him and denied ‘the charges regarding Turkey’s sponsorship of these channels.’

However, El-Saharty said he stressed that ‘the crew working on the Brotherhood channels such as Al-Sharq, Egypt Now, and other channels, are currently in Istanbul and Ankara.’

The Muslim Brotherhood was declared a terrorist organisation by the Egyptian government in 2013.

El-Saharty said he told Turkish diplomats that ‘it is not hard for the Turkish security forces to find out where those channels are being broadcasted from.’

In September Turkish media quoted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying that his country welcomes senior figures from Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood after they were asked to leave Qatar under pressure from other Gulf states.

El-Saharty renewed calls for immediate deportation of those members of the Brotherhood against whom Interpol has issued a red notice.

Relations between Egypt and Turkey have deteriorated since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

The Turkish leader Erdogan has emerged as one of the fiercest critics of Morsi’s ouster, repeatedly describing the transition as a ‘coup’ and criticising the world’s ‘inaction’ towards the Egyptian government’s crackdown on Islamists, which has seen hundreds killed and thousands jailed.

However, according to a report by the Israeli MEMRI:

On February 2, 2015, non-Islamist Turkish media outlets reported that calls for killing Egyptian security officials and threats against Egypt were being issued by Muslim Brotherhood (MB) operatives in Turkey. The independent Turkish daily Cumhuriyet wrote that three Istanbul-based television channels – Rabia TV, Al-Sharq, and Misir Al-A’an – belonging to MB operatives have been broadcasting threats and warnings against a major conference on investment to be held in Cairo in mid-March 2015. The next day, February 3, Hurriyet Daily News published a report titled “Turkish Foreign Ministry Backs Egyptian Broadcasters In Turkey.”

Read the full report here.

The GMBDW reported in December 2014 on the launch of multiple new Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated TV stations, mostly located in Turkey and said to be financially supported by Qatar.

A 2011 report report authored by the GMBDW editor concluded that since 2006, Turkey has become a new center for the Global Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. That report also detailed Erdogan’s ideological ties to the Global Muslim Brotherhood network, ties which date back to Erdogan’s affiliation in the 1970s with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a Saudi  charity with known connections to extremist and terrorist groups. In November 2014, the GMBDW reported on that Israel had arrested dozens of members of a Hamas terror network said to be funded and directed by Hamas officials in Turkey. A December 2014 report says that Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal attended the annual conference of the ruling Turkish AKP Party and met with the Turkish Prime Minister:

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