Turkey ties hands with Muslim Brotherhood to set military camp, helping Ankara-Doha axis to gain influence over Yemen

 On Saturday an EU delegation including ambassadors of France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Ireland and Finland, as well as the deputy ambassador of Norway, arrived in Aden, to push forward the long-stalled peace efforts with senior government officials. The conflict-riddled country of Yemen, has been in crisis for over past six years and has been struggling to reach a resolution between internationally recognized government forces and extremist forces, mainly led by Iran-backed, Houthis.

 

The recent attacks in the country, the latest being huge explosions in January, which targeted a security patrol in the southern Yemen city port, pointed at increasing presence of Muslim Brotherhood in various pockets of the country. Yemen’s the ongoing civil war, which has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions of inhabitants, and pushed the country to the edge of starvation, triggering the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. To initiate the peaceful resumption of a stable political system, the EU delegation reached Aden. EU delegation discussed several issues with the Yemeni government, including the Turkish interference and the progress in implementing the Riyadh agreement.

 

Turkey’s close association with Muslim Brotherhood, an extremist organization, helped Ankara and its closed ally, Doha in gaining control over Yemen’s vulnerable and unstable political setup. Ankara seemed to be taking advantage of the vacuum created by UAE’s exit from the nation, which officially withdrew its military troops from Yemen, around February 2020. As per the internal sources, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been helping the extremist outfits in rebuilding their network and, gain indirect hold over the country.

 

A Yemeni official, who preferred to remain anonymous claimed that Turkish intelligence agents has been clandestinely paying large sums of money to some young officers. The high-level EU delegation expressed serious concern over Ankara's intervention and indirect stalling of the peace process in the county. After gaining a formidable presence in Libya and Somalia, Aden became a strategic location for Turkey, to aid Erdogan in his ambitious plan to rebuild the Ottoman Empire.

 

On the sideline of the recent visit of European delegation to Yemen in pursuit to push for peace keeping measures, Majed Fadhail, deputy minister of human rights and a member of the government delegation, who attended the talks, said, “the Yemeni government delegation has offered concessions for the talks to succeed.” He added that over the time Houthis have been causing more obstructions to keep the talks from happening. And they are backed by Iran, Ankara, Qatar and assisted by armed outfits of Brotherhood.

 

Nadwa Al-Dawsari, a Yemeni conflict analyst and a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute, also highlighted that US administration’s lifting of terrorist designation of Houthis as a trigger for the current crisis. She expressed disappointment in Biden administration’s failure to gain leverage over Houthis by striking a deal with latter, pressurizing them to stop obstructing the UN mission in the country including, repairing the floating Safer tanker. She said, “By revoking Houthis designation unconditionally, the Biden administration made a huge mistake. It could have been used as leverage on the Houthis to deliver something in return — at least to allow engineers to empty the Safer. The US just lost that leverage for nothing.”