Comparing the Political Experiences of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

Abstract

Sociopolitical movements with “conservative” character tend to share some commonalities, particularly those operating in developing countries such as Turkey and Egypt. The presence of similar conditions drives these movements to adopt common organizational and programmatic features. Relatively less wealthy developing countries, in contrast to developed countries, generally tend to have similar conditions such as military dictatorship or tutelage, bureaucratic authoritarianism, low-level industrialization, and external pressures from the Western world for liberalization and integration into the global economy (Calvert and Calvert 2007). Close economic and political ties with the Western world often serve as motivating or limiting agents for conservative movements to refrain from pursuing radical “fundamentalist political projects” and instead search for power within the rules provided by existing political mechanisms (i.e., remaining within the status quo). It is argued in this study that Turkey and Egypt are similar in their possession of such a sociopolitical and economic background to some extent. Thus, conservative political movements operating in these two countries bear notable resemblances.