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Background : Students of indonesian studies have observed the so called conservative turn among Muslim in Indonesia, when their attitudes and opinions pertaining to politics and pluralism, societal and religious, exhibited more defensive and exclusive tendencies. Muhammadiyah is among the community that is said to experience the syndrome. Meanwhile, in the last decade Muhammadiyah internally embarked a kind of institutional U-Turn, in the form of ideological empowerment, in response to trends of taking overs of its communities and assets by newly formed Islamist organisations and parties; and internal ideological loosening when more professionals with no ideological backgrounds taking ups policy making positions in its universities and hospitals. Aim: To examine theoretically that what has happened in Muhammadiyah is not conservative turn, but rather institutional U-Turn, first recommended by 2005 National Congress (Muktamar) to do ideological empowerments, especially at grassroots levels and professionally-run institutions. Method : This articles applies document analysis, to compare, on the one hand books and articles reporting the conservative turn, the arguments they develop, and evidences they put forward; and on the other hand, documents from internal Muhammadiyah that shows its effort to organise ideological empowerment. Result : What external and internal observers of Muhammadiyah perceived as part of the bigger picture of Indonesian Muslim conservative turn, turned out to be an internal efforts to do ideological empowerment, responding to external threats and internal weakness. Conclusion : Students of Indonesian Islam need to be more critical toward intellectual Zeitgeist of de-radicalisation, that greedily lump everything outside its standard as conservatisation and radicalisation, which in fact it is not.