Relations with Egypt and Kılıçdaroğlu's season of love for coup-makers

Kılıçdaroğlu's vigil of support for coup-plotting dictators has come around again. While supporting them he has slammed the policies of his own state and wiped away in one stroke the strategic and ethical stance of his own country. For whose sake, in whose name, for what strategic purpose?

He has said: "Why are you fighting with Egypt? Fighting with Egypt means dragging Turkey into disaster in the Mediterranean." When Kılıçdaroğlu says this in Turkey, would Sisi, who is in open aggression against Turkey, who has formed an alliance with Greece against the interests of his own country just so that Turkey would be harmed, and who has sacrificed a large amount of maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean for the sake of this alliance, need another lawyer?

Before asking why we are fighting with Egypt, should the leader of Turkey's opposition party not ask out of what motives and motivations Egypt is in hostility toward Turkey? Does he ever think what it does to a social democratic party to get close, for the sake of opposition, to dictators who are in blatant enmity toward Turkey, and who are enemies of their own people in their own country at that?

What kind of product of negligence and misguidance is it to put the Brotherhood at the source of Turkey's dispute with Egypt? As though that were the whole matter, Kılıçdaroğlu displays a marvelous example of political intelligence by saying: "What is the Brotherhood anyway? Is it worth spoiling relations with Sisi for its sake? Egypt sees the Brotherhood the way we see the PKK."

Then let us remind him of Sisi and explain what the Brotherhood is. Let us leave him alone with the disgusting cunning contained in the attempt to identify Turkey with the Brotherhood through it: What is Sisi anyway?

He is one of the most merciless, bloodiest-handed dictators of modern history, who overthrew, in a junta coup that he insidiously plotted, the only elected President in the first proper elections in Egyptian history, the President who had appointed him as Minister of Defense, and who savagely massacred 3000 people in one day from the innocent civilian population that objected to him. He is a despot who, like all dictators who are themselves complete terrorists, brands the whole of the civilian and democratic opposition as terrorists, leaves no ground for any human rights, and turns the whole country into an open-air prison for people.

For Sisi it is not only the Brotherhood but all dissidents who are terrorists. All the likely presidential candidates who entered the presidential race against him, former Chief of the General Staff Sami Annan, former head of the Central Auditing Organization Hisham Genena, former head of the UN Atomic Agency Mohamed ElBaradei, former Secretary General of the Arab League Amr Moussa and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, none of them are Brotherhood members, but now go and ask where they are.

Turkey's subject is not the Brotherhood or anything of the sort. But to see the Brotherhood as identical to the PKK means precisely trying to legitimize Sisi's massacres, his torturing human rights violations and his lawless rule while at the same time legitimizing the PKK. Is identifying with the PKK people who, even when 3000 of them were massacred in the square, unarmed, defenseless, in their most civilian state, expressed their stance as "our peaceful stance is stronger than their bullets", a service to the murderous dictator, or to the PKK, or to both?

Since the occasion has arisen and the subject has been opened, let us state once more.

The interests of Turkey and Egypt in fact require them to be in close cooperation with each other. Turkey knows this and also conveys such messages to the Egyptian state. There is no need for Egypt, simply because of some disputes with Turkey, to sacrifice its own interests and cooperate with Greece and the Greek Cypriots. Messages to this effect have been given in the clearest way, and continue to be given.

Turkey is in deep dispute, even opposition, with Iran because of its policies in Syria first of all, and in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. But this opposition does not prevent cooperation on certain issues. Turkey is again in open war in Syria with the USA or the forces it openly supports, yet in some other fields close cooperation and alliances between them continue. The same applies to Russia as well. In Syria the forces supported by Russia are in open war with Turkey, but even this does not prevent the existing relations between Turkey and Russia from continuing.

The officials currently governing Egypt need to understand this. Turkey's stance against coups, its sensitivity toward human rights, its attitude on safeguarding the rights of refugees who have taken refuge in its country for humanitarian reasons are principled, and it will not give them up. Unfortunately the whole Middle East is currently the region with the most human rights violations, and in this region Turkey is the only place where humanitarian asylum seekers can breathe. Turkey will not give up this stance on behalf of the whole Islamic world. The matter has nothing to do with the Brotherhood.

Turkey does not look at whether people who have taken refuge in its country, having received unjustly a death sentence or a prison sentence solely because of their political stance although they were involved in no armed terrorist act, are Brotherhood members. Besides, among those who have taken refuge in Turkey this way there are also loads of leftists, liberals and people of other tendencies who are not Brotherhood.

Egypt and other countries should respect this principled humanitarian stance of Turkey on the side of human rights, and should see that in the final analysis it is in their own favor.

Although Turkey's message is very clear, is there a possibility that Egypt will stop its hostility toward Turkey, which is against its own interests? In the name of what kind of axis is Egypt acting right now? Can it decide on its own and develop its own free and autonomous policy? While the axis that had the coup made in Egypt by Sisi is still active and its primary target is Turkey, how will Egypt be able to respond positively to Turkey's new requests for cooperation? Let these questions too be asked of all the parties concerned since the occasion has arisen. Kılıçdaroğlu can start from whichever question he likes.