Turkey’s Justice and Development Party and its effect on the Egyptian model
by Mohamed Abdel Kader*

After these groups were excluded from and deprived of taking part in political life during the rule of former President Hosni Mubarak, the constraints have been removed and the doors opened wide to Islamic groups. Hence, many political parties and forces with reference to Islamic traditions have emerged. This post-revolution phenomenon can be labeled as Egypt’s second wave of Islamic parties.

That second wave follows the first one in which a number of political parties were frozen during the former regime on account of their religious affiliations. For example, the Labor Party was frozen though licensed and the Wasat Party’s cofounders could not get a license despite applying for registration four times during the rule of former regime. The second wave is marked by the emergence of an unusually large number of political parties affiliated with the Salafist and Jihadist movements, as those parties now enjoy complete freedom in their activities. Islamic groups have a growing feeling they should make use of this historic time to establish their political platforms, which may contradict in content with building a civil Egyptian state.

On the basis of an inaccurate presumption, those newly formed parties felt that after they changed from banned political groups into legal political entities, it would be possible to invest their political platforms with such legitimacy in order to apply not only principles of the Islamic Sharia as most Egyptian constitutions drafted since 1923 provide for but to hand down rulings as well.

Conservative democrats of Turkey vs. devout Islamists of Egypt

Those parties established by the devout Islamists of Egypt now seek to use all legal means to promote themselves and to carry out their no-longer-secret agendas with an aim to participate in the ruling of the country. One of those means is an attempt to copy the model adopted by the Turkish Justice and Development Party (AK Party). They label such a party as an Islamic one without taking into account the essential differences between the conservative democrats of Turkey and the devout Islamists of Egypt. Their attempts to copy the Turkish model were confined to choosing names identical or similar to the name of Turkish Justice and Development Party without focusing on the content and essence of its experience.

For example, the Justice and Development Party, Building and Development Party, Change and Development Party, Reform and Development Party, Peace and Development Party, Islamic Virtue Party (Al-Fadhila Party) and Justice and Equality Party were formed after the January 25 Revolution. The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), was also formed after the revolution.

During his meeting with representatives of political parties and other forces on the sidelines of his last visit to Egypt, Prime Minister of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan joked with Chairman of the FJP Dr. Mohammed Sayed Morsi, asking him to compensate Turkey for the intellectual property rights of the Turkish party name to be paid to the benefit of Somali citizens.

Furthermore, some of those parties are trying to make use of the popularity of the Turkish Justice and Development Party in Egypt by claiming they support the replication of the Turkish model in Egypt. They claim that the comprehensive Turkish renaissance, whether at the political, social or economic level, is attributable to members of the Turkish Justice and Development Party.

Although the new Egyptian law on political parties issued by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) last September banned licensing parties on a religious basis, those parties resorted to the Supreme Administrative Court to be officially registered by virtue of the second article of the constitutional declaration that stipulates “Islamic Sharia is the main source of legislation.”

This led to the formation of a number of parties, including the Building and Development Party -- most members of which belong to Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, which is responsible for most of the violent acts witnessed in Egypt over the last several decades and topped by the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

Preparing to face a dilemma

Although these parties seek to win a large number of seats in the next parliament, relying on the premise that they are closer to citizens, more organized and have the ability to mobilize a large number of citizens due to their focus on service fields, they face a great political dilemma as their attempt to copy the ruling party in Turkey unveiled the essential differences between the Egyptian and Turkish experiments, particularly as those parties attacked Erdoğan on Egyptian media when he called for the application of secularism in Egypt. This was made clear when a leader of one of those parties said that Erdoğan has no right to intervene in Egyptian internal affairs and that Egypt is not secular like Turkey.

This situation revealed that these parties have a narrow political vision and do not understand well the concept of secularism that provides for not siding with a certain religion in favor of another. The situation also revealed that those parties welcomed Erdoğan only with the aim of promoting themselves.

The parties’ reactions towards Erdoğan’s statement aroused fear and doubt of numerous segments of Egyptian society who believe that these parties will copy the Iranian rather than the Turkish experiment.

However, there are voices endeavoring to unmask the essential differences between the ruling party in Turkey and the Islamic parties in Egypt that are in favor of more moderate Islamic parties and trends, like the Wasat Party. The former regime refused to license the Wasat Party out of fear that it would be a moderate alternative to the MB and the devout Islamists that the regime used to frighten the international community and Egyptian society.

The fact is that most Islamic parties in Egypt have not understood the model of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, and they copy the Turkish model only superficially.

*Mohamed Abdel Kader is a researcher at the Al-Ahram Center for Political & Strategic Studies in Cairo.