Three of the Four Sanctioned Men Are Based in Türkiye, and Ankara Has Said Nothing

The Treasury designation issued Thursday 23 July under Executive Order 13224 named four individuals and three entities. One individual, Mahmoud al-Abyari, is described by the Office of Foreign Assets Control as a United Kingdom-based senior leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Secretary General of the Muslim Brotherhood General Secretariat. The other three — Khuldun Khamis Zakaria Alden, listed as owner, and shareholders Zaid Issam Ahmed Al-Jebouri and Abdullah Issam Ahmad Al-Jebouri — are Türkiye-based and were designated in connection with one company, El-Kahira for General Trading. The two Al-Jebouris were listed, in Treasury’s wording, “for owning or controlling, directly or indirectly, El-Kahira for General Trading.” Treasury also says al-Abyari supported fundraising for Filistin Vakfi and Hayat Yolu, two entities OFAC had sanctioned previously. Both carry Turkish names.

No Turkish government response has been located in the week since. Anadolu Agency, the Turkish state wire, carried the action on 23 July as one line item in a broader same-day package that also covered nine entities and two individuals tied to the Cuban government and more than 50 individuals linked to a Mexican narco-terrorist organisation. Treasury’s release warns that foreign financial institutions conducting significant transactions for the designated parties risk secondary sanctions, including loss of access to the US financial system — the clause that bears on Turkish banks rather than on the three men. Secretary Scott Bessent said only that “the Trump Administration will relentlessly pursue terrorists and those who finance them.” Two of the three designated entities are described by Treasury as “sham charities tied to the Muslim Brotherhood”; neither has been named in any secondary account retrieved.

Assessment: The geography of a designation tells you which government is being asked to act. On the arithmetic, this one asks Ankara — three of four individuals, the only named company, and the two prior listings al-Abyari is accused of fundraising for. Yet the week’s commentary has been about London, because a secretary general is a better headline than a trading firm. Distrust any account of the network’s reach until the SDN entries are published: two of three entities remain unnamed, and the one claim circulating about an Indonesian node rests on a single partisan site. Silence from Ankara is not neutrality; it is the cheapest available response while the secondary-sanctions clause remains untested.