On the coup's 5th anniversary, the reflections of 24 June in Egypt

We know that the 24 June elections were followed with great interest and excitement not only in Turkey but from all over the world. In this regard, our media published a great many reports and images about how the elections were followed with such interest and excitement from different centers. Of course, some external centers followed them hoping and wishing for Erdoğan to lose. But the scenes coming especially from the Islamic world revealed very clearly the depth, breadth and meaning of Turkey's and Erdoğan's leadership.

Before the election, the news and images of prayers coming from Pakistan, from Sudan, from Cairo, from Gaza, from Mecca and Medina, from Syria and Iraq gave more than enough of a feeling that the election was an event taking place far beyond Turkey's borders.

After the election, the common expression of those who called with great joy and happiness was "perhaps we could not take part in the elections with our votes, but God willing, there was a work of our prayers in the results that came out of the ballot boxes as well." Some may of course see this as a kind of unfair competitive contribution among the candidates running in the election. But there is no way of barring anyone from this contribution. This is what Erdoğan and Turkey mean for the world.

Undoubtedly, this intense interest and closeness directed toward Turkey, Erdoğan and the AK Party has other meanings, manifestations and consequences as well. In the geographies where the AK Party's victory in this way has created a great wave of excitement and joy today, this interest and prayer is in fact also an expression of a demand and desire directed at their own countries. With the interest felt in Erdoğan, the peoples of the Arab-Islamic world desire in their own countries too what Erdoğan has accomplished in his country.

However Europe may be looking at Turkey under Erdoğan's leadership at present, in the Arab world, upon the election results, tons of speeches were made, articles written and social media posts shared on the virtues of a country's being governed with democracy, with openness of the channels of the people's political participation, with transparency, at least with free and open elections.

Every praise of Turkey has increasingly begun to be processed as a desire and demand for democracy. When Montesquieu, in the Persian Letters, made his depictions of a kind of "oriental despotism," he was indirectly criticizing the tyranny in his own country. Indeed, he even exaggerated more than necessary the despotism of the regime in Iran from time to time, because it served to criticize the excessive tyranny in his own country. For all the depictions of Iranian despotism were directed as criticism at the situation in his own country (this is an Althusser reading, of course). Now in many countries, praises of Turkey have such a function. Praise of Turkey turns into a satire of their own countries. That is why there are countries and media that cannot even bear to listen to praises of Turkey.

One of the centers that followed Turkey's elections closely with great interest was Cairo. The interest of the people and the interest of the media and of the coup regime were of course very far from each other, as in many countries. The Egyptian people accepted Erdoğan's election victory as their own victory, and many of them greeted it as a refreshing and consoling breeze in the unimaginably repressive, coup-ridden atmosphere they have been living in for 5 years. Yet the Egyptian media, more stubbornly even than our own Oranges, kept on giving, with an incomprehensible insistence, until the last minute that the winner of the elections was Muharrem İnce. Even after the elections had concluded and even Muharrem İnce had accepted the results, it continued to give hope that it would eventually be understood that the elections had been rigged and that İnce was the real winner.

Meanwhile, if we pause our own election bustle and recall, 5 years of the military coup in Egypt have been completed. Sisi, the Minister of Defense whom he himself had appointed, overthrew Muhammed Morsi, the first elected president in Egyptian history, with a military coup on 3 July 2013. Three thousand people were killed in one day by the fire opened on the civilian, unarmed people who filled the squares to object, not seeing the coup as legitimate. In total nearly a hundred thousand people were arrested, beginning with the elected President, and over 60 thousand people, many without ever being brought before any court, are still held in the harshest dungeon conditions.

Sisi, who did not like the constitution prepared in an entirely democratically participatory manner under Morsi, passed a constitution to his own liking without any democratic participation, and under this constitution had himself elected twice with 97-99 percent, with a voter turnout below ten percent. He first targeted the Brotherhood, then liquidated all the opposition. While doing all this, he collapsed the economy and razed social trust, stability and integrity to the ground. At present in Egypt there is no investment climate whatsoever, no stability, no trust, no law. All of these, of course, are things connected to one another. There is no parliament that functions, that can exercise oversight, that can represent political diversity and the interests of the people. There is no legal system in which the people can take refuge against Sisi's practices. Everything depends on the two lips of Sisi.

By contrast, there is no serious discomfort, objection or criticism toward this situation in Egypt from either Europe or America. The regimes they deem fit for the Islamic world are such regimes.

Turkey is the only country that, at the state level, objects to, criticizes and takes a stand against this situation in Egypt, which all the peoples of the Islamic world are uneasy about. Even if Turkey says nothing, the model it is currently displaying disturbs Egypt and the order that supports it. This is, in fact, the reason the elections were watched from Egypt with great interest.

The link between the coup in Egypt and the elections in Turkey is not limited to this, of course. In fact, a twin of the coup carried out in Egypt 5 years ago had been planned for Turkey as well. Gezi was planned from the same center as the Tamarrud movement in Egypt, to obtain the same results, and was put on stage with very similar scenarios. That game ended with a coup in Egypt and with failure in Turkey. Had it succeeded, the administration deemed fit for Turkey would have been one like Sisi's, without any doubt. Indeed, they did not give up afterwards; with 17-25 December, 6-7 October, 7 June and most recently 15 July, they wanted the same thing in other guises.

On 24 June, that is, again an interesting coincidence, the day Morsi was elected President in 2012, they grasped one more hope. That hope, this time, flourished for the Egyptian people whom they oppress.