By fomenting chaos in Egypt and using Islamists fleeing Israel’s war in Gaza as a means to overthrow the ruling junta there, Turkey is making the ultimate power play.
Turkey is moving hard and fast into the Greater Middle East, with the mission of restoring its Ottoman-era influence and becoming the dominant power of the Muslim world. Turkey, a predominantly Sunni Muslim nation of ethnic Turks, is led by an Islamist regime under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
For years, Erdogan has slowly moved Turkey into a position to effectively challenge any potential regional rivals, while keeping its NATO partners nominally on the sidelines of Erdogan’s grandiose—and revanchist—ambitions.
Turkey’s Regional Power Play in Syria—and Beyond
Erdogan’s Turkey sits at the nexus of the Islamist movement today. Recall that it was Ankara that initially called for the sweeping aside of Muammar Gaddafi from Libya, on the grounds he was a dictator who did not represent the will of his people.
Similarly, Erdogan’s covert forces contributed significantly in the arming and equipping of the Islamist terrorist networks that had declared holy war against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad throughout the brutal Syrian Civil War. Indeed, Turkey was the primary sponsor of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist network that ousted Assad in the closing months of 2024.
Today, with its allied proxies in charge of that country, Turkey is solidifying its position in the region—and casting its eyes on its next target. With Syria in hand, Turkey has been quietly turning its ire on Egypt—where the Muslim Brotherhood, the mothership group that created the modern Islamist terror threat, emerged in 1928. Since the overthrow of Islamist Mohamed Morsi in 2012, Egypt’s secular government has been fighting to keep that beast away from power in the ancient nation-state. Turkey, however, means to unleash it.
The Gaza Refugee Crisis Threatens to Weaken Egypt
And Ankara is receiving help—albeit likely inadvertently—from Jerusalem. As Israel seeks to destroy the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist group encamped in the Gaza Strip, the inability or reluctance of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to wage a more surgical, door-to-door-style counterterrorism assault on Gaza has led to a major humanitarian crisis. Massive bombings of suspected Hamas targets embedded within and among the civilian population there has caused a refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of Gazans without homes and desperate to leave the strip.
To that end, Jerusalem—understandably fearing the Islamism of groups like Hamas, and with an eye toward settling the Gaza Strip—welcomes an exodus of Palestinian refugees from Gaza. Some have speculated that the Netanyahu government in Israel is secretly encouraging the refugees to head into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Recall that Israel conquered Sinai from Egypt in 1967, but out of magnanimity and a real desire for lasting peace with Cairo, the Israelis returned the desert land back to the Egyptians. Cairo’s current government has moved large numbers of troops and tanks to the border crossings between Gaza and Egypt, in an effort to tamp down on the refugee flows.
Why? Two reasons. First, Egypt does not want to deal with a refugee crisis. In the aftermath of the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars, scores of Palestinians fled the disputed territory, taking up residence in the Arab states around the Middle East. In many cases, they never left, and created political problems for their hosts—notably attempting to overthrow the government of Jordan in 1970.
Second, and on the same note, Cairo understands that within the Gazan refugee flows are scores of hardened, well-armed Hamas fighters. These fighters would just as likely link up with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and could even mount a revolution against the U.S.-backed military junta ruling Egypt. Islamist fighters would take advantage of existing discontent—Egypt’s junta is widely unpopular among the people, as most juntas are.
There would be precedent for such an uprising. In 2011 during the so-called Arab Spring, Egypt’s pro-American dictatorship under President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown and replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood. Once in power, the Muslim Brotherhood strove to turn Egypt into a Sunni Arab version of Iran. Thankfully for regional stability, the Egyptian military stepped in, overthrowing them.
Yet given the long-term presence and robust support that the Muslim Brotherhood enjoys, Cairo can never let its guard down. And it cannot allow for the great destabilizing elements of Hamas-types fleeing Israel’s war in Gaza finding a new base of operations in Egyptian territory.
Turkey Is Playing for Keeps
Here’s where Turkey re-enters this terrible fray.
Opposed to the military regime of Cairo, and mired in territorial disputes with Egypt over oil and natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean Sea, Ankara wants to remove the problem permanently. Of course, Ankara is ideologically aligned with both the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as well as Hamas. By fomenting chaos in Egypt and using Islamists fleeing Israel’s war in Gaza as a means to overthrow the ruling junta there, Turkey is making the ultimate power play.
With Turkish elements ensconced in Syria and a fellow Islamist regime in Egypt, Ankara could very well then be in a position to annihilate the predominantly Jewish democracy of Israel.
What better calling card for the former—and, perhaps, new—Ottoman Empire than to have credit for being the Muslim power that annihilated Israel?
Egypt is hanging by a thread geopolitically. Even as Erdogan smiles and pretends to be a partner to the Egyptian government, the relationship between Erdogan’s regime and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is too deep to ignore.
Turkey is playing a complex game. But it is a game that could achieve Erdogan’s great ambition of restoring Turkey as the seat of power in the Islamic world. For American allies in Egypt and Israel, that should be a nightmare in the making. Yet, no one seems to be publicly acknowledging this concern.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert, a Senior National Security Editor at The National Interest as well as a contributor at Popular Mechanics, who consults regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including the Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, the Asia Times, and countless others. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
Image: Shutterstock / fortton.
