Between Turkey's Coup and Egypt's Coup

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Two military coups in two major regional states, one Arab, the other Muslim but non-Arab. One coup succeeded without obstacle or hindrance; the other failed and was buried in its cradle.

Egypt, the great Arab state, turned against its first popularly elected president since the dawn of history, and the military removed their president, arrested him, humiliated him, and judicial rulings were issued criminalizing him, convicting him, and sending him to life imprisonment.

Egypt fell silent over what was happening, sacrificing the democracy that could have served as a system of relief for everyone, and accepted the killing of democracy before it could grow and mature. Such was the stance of most of Egypt’s intellectuals and writers, who applauded the coup without any democratic restraint or moral scruple. These intellectuals and writers, who had once been so enthusiastic for democracy and so insistent on adopting it, left it to face its dark fate alone at the hands of the military — indeed, they even lent support to those who violated it, wrecking a political experiment that could have been built upon for a better future for Egypt.

From the two experiences, it is clear that the Turkish president was far shrewder than the Egyptian president, working over the years to build a state that embraced his ideas, his views, his policies, and his party. He gathered people around him by focusing on addressing their concerns and improving their living conditions. People loved him, stood with him, gave him their trust at the ballot box, and rushed to his aid when he found himself in a bind. The Egyptian president, by contrast, tried to practice Arab-style despotism through elections, treating his victory as an opportunity for one-man rule and the exclusion of others, and never gave himself the chance to consolidate his foundations, or to test his approaches to addressing people’s concerns through realistic policies — thereby opening the field to attacks against him and the distortion of his image, which prepared the atmosphere for the coup against him, under the pretext of Egyptian national interest.

The Turkish people’s conduct toward the military coup was entirely different from that of the Egyptian people, in that the Turks did not succumb to emotion, were not swayed by the rousing phrases issued by the coup plotters, and gave themselves several hours to think through what needed to be done. The Egyptian people, by contrast, quickly joined the celebration, lending support to the coup plotters and contributing to the president’s fall. The Turkish people feared for a democracy that had developed and flowered, while the Egyptians cared little for democratic performance or for the elections that constitute the source of a government’s legitimacy. The Turks took to the streets to defend their president, while the Egyptians took to the streets to bring theirs down.

It was noted that some Turkish opposition parties, committed to nationalist thought, also stood against the coup, out of fear for democracy. The unspoken logic of these parties was: if the military turns against Erdoğan, they will turn against us too — and so the country would be plunged into labyrinths and problems that complicate matters and damage political stability in Turkey.

In Egypt, by contrast, the opposition stood with the coup plotters, contributing to the coup’s activities, paying no heed to the source of political legitimacy or to Egypt’s future. Turkey will now surge further forward, while Egypt will continue groaning under a variety of internal economic, social, and political problems.

Erdoğan got it right when he organized his country’s governance according to clear principles and foundations, creating harmony among the various institutions of the state and making the administration a support and aid to the political system. Morsi, by contrast, appears not to have possessed an administrative vision, and left the deep state as he found it, in contradiction with the political and social vision of the Muslim Brotherhood. But we should bear in mind that Morsi did not remain in power long enough for us to see how he might have organized affairs. Erdoğan was given a long stretch of time and proved wise administratively, while Morsi was not given the same chance — yet the period during which he did govern Egypt is enough for us to conclude that he was not a man of administrative philosophy. On the other hand, Erdoğan erred in focusing on manufacturing enemies, surrounding Turkey with enemies on every side, and this may well be the primary factor behind the outbreak of the coup, while Morsi provoked people such that he left himself very little room to maneuver toward remaining in power.

In any case, we Arabs need to learn from the Turkish lesson, and it is important that we not turn our backs on principle, giving priority instead to partisan, tribal, or organizational interests. Principle must remain the foundation.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “بين انقلاب تركيا وانقلاب مصر” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.