Cover photo: a young Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have supper with Hezb-e Islami leader, America’s favourite mujahedin, and soon-to-become ‘the butcher of Kabul’ Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in 1986, unspecified location. Credit DailyShahadat.com

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan applauded during the parliamentary group meeting of the AKP on October 25, 2023, stated, «Hamas is not a terrorist organization but a group of liberators and warriors of Islam («Mücahit») fighting to protect their lands and citizens».

The use of the term “Mücahit” by the Islamist President of Turkey for members of Hamas is not accidental. This term was used to refer to Turkish Cypriots recruited by the terrorist organization TMT, formed by the Special Warfare Department of the Turkish General Staff to implement the Plan with the code name «KIP» («Cyprus Recovery Plan») under the orders of the Menderes government. The founder of TMT, Rauf Denktas (nom de guerre «Toros»), held the title of «First Mücahit».

In the photograph, a young Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – well before becoming the mayor of Istanbul – is on the right, alongside Islamist leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Afghan head of Hizb-i Islami, the Islamic Party. On the left is Rached Al-Ghannouchi from Tunisia, the leader of the Ennahdha movement, the Movement of Islamic Tendency created in 1981, inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Sources

Securitypraxis, «Taliban rule in Kabul: authoritarianism on the rise, democracies on the defensive», by Francesco Strazzari, 24 August 2021

Reuters, «Turkey’s Erdogan says Hamas is not terrorist organisation, cancels trip to Israel», by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Huseyin Hayatsever, October 25, 2023