Déjà vu — the West’s effort to transform Turkey into another Egypt

The Turkish coup attempt last month gave me an opportunity to reminisce about my experiences in Cairo during the 2013 Egyptian. I compared it to the ongoing events in Turkey while I joined the crowd in front of the parliament to protect our democracy. The Turks, as with the Egyptians, never thought that their soldiers would turn their guns against them. They realised that they were mistaken when the tanks, jets and helicopters took aim. Nevertheless, they did not give up without a fight and the crowd grew following the appeal from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Even though 250 people were killed and more than 1,500 were injured, the coup failed; victory was a monumental success but it came at a great cost. The night of 15 July is now a symbolic moment in our history, when people of all parties, ideologies and ethnicities came together, united against a common enemy.

The Egyptian coup and the West’s attitude

Looking back on what happened in Ankara and Istanbul, and Cairo, it is clear that another similarity emerges; the approach of the political institutions, media, academia and think-tanks towards the coup in Egypt and the coup attempt in Turkey.

During the Egyptian coup in 2013, the western world, foremost the US, decided consciously to ignore its reality. The West quite literally played the part of the three monkeys — seeing no evil, hearing no evil, speaking no evil — while the military overthrew the first ever democratically-elected President of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi. Most of the political parties in Egypt were closed down by force; the media was censored; thousands of ordinary people were arrested; and, most importantly, those who opposed the coup were suppressed with extreme violence by both the police and the military. While all of this was going on, the US government said somewhat unbelievably that it was unable to define or describe the events in Egypt clearly; the C word was taboo in Washington.

When the resistance against the coup was more severe than expected and massacres started, the US approach faltered for a short time. As criticism became louder, Washington had to suspend military aid to Egypt temporarily in order to manage the issue, but this pretence did not last long. America continued to fund the powerful generals and Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, by equipping and training the Egyptian military. With US support for coups and autocrats in Islamic countries became ever clearer, we knew that Obama’s fine 2009 speech in Cairo — “A New Beginning” — with its hopes of democracy and freedom was composed of yet more empty western promises.

The European Union’s stance was very similar to that of the US, in terms of its organisational approach and that of its member states. Instead of standing against those behind the brutal military coup in Cairo, the then EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Britain’s Baroness Cathy Ashton, went against the “values” of the EU that are considered to be its tools for soft power. She tried to convince the political parties against the coup to accept the “new reality” during her visits to Egypt in the post-military takeover period. As a result, the EU, like the USA, actually refrained from defining events as a coup and continued its political, economic and military relations with those who usurped Egyptian democracy.

The western media also acted hypocritically to events in Egypt. While Morsi was depicted as a tyrant, General Al-Sisi was presented as the prime mover for the restoration of democracy by fighting against “radical Islamist terror”. Instead of the coup actors, the democratically-minded Muslim Brotherhood was the main target, blamed for dividing Egyptians and trying to bring sharia to the country. All of this took place while the Egyptian army continued with its massacres of ordinary people who wanted their democracy back. Three years down the line, we can see the real effect of Egypt’s coup, with an economically and socially devastated country where thousands have been killed and more than 40,000 languish in prison as political detainees.

Déjà vu!

Just over three years separate the coup in Egypt and the coup attempt in Turkey, but we are experiencing a déjà vu moment. Although we witnessed a very visible coup attempt with tanks killing civilians, bombs being thrown at the parliament building, a lengthy international silence and then belated and ineffective statements by the EU and the US, it is Egypt all over again. As it became clearer that the coup was unsuccessful, the western media targeted the civilians who fought for democracy and President Erdoğan; the response was tangible proof that the unsuccessful coup was a tremendous disappointment for the West. Speculation was spread as “fact” that the coup was actually carried out by Erdoğan himself so that he could take complete power in Turkey; even Turkey’s continued NATO membership was called into question.

Western-oriented human rights organisations, which have been unable to compile and publish reports for years regarding the ongoing war in Syria that has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, managed to publish reports within days on the alleged mistreatment of soldiers in prison after they took part in the coup attempt. Many think thanks claimed that the coup was unsuccessful due to the fact that Erdoğan was not killed. Some analysts claimed that the fight against Daesh is under threat as a result of the unsuccessful coup attempt, and even went as far as stating that the Turkish president would use Al-Qaeda against the US in an asymmetric struggle.

Although the western world’s stance during and after the coup attempt is an important factor in allowing us to pinpoint the identity of the international actors behind it, I will pass on this subject and finish with a final evaluation. The events that we have experienced have shown us clearly that if it had been successful, the coup attempt would have been justified one way or the other by the West. Turkey would have been transformed into another Egypt. Taksim and Kizilay Squares would have been turned into the new Rabaa Al-Adawiyya and Nahda Squares. While thousands of those who were opposed to the coup would be murdered most brutally by a triumphant military, the West would have presented this as the re-establishment of democracy. That’s the reality of the West’s effort to transform Turkey into another Egypt. The people of Turkey didn’t allow it to happen, but they should learn the lesson well for the future.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.