The revolt of those whose homes were demolished over their heads in Egypt

While we go on talking about the horizon of relations between Turkey and Egypt, Egypt has been the scene of serious popular unrest and intense protest movements against Sisi for 8 days now. The demonstrations began on 20 September, the anniversary of the call to revolt launched last year by the contractor Muhammad Ali, who fled the country after exposing the luxurious palaces Sisi built for himself, with small turnouts, but gradually spread across the whole country.

We could also dwell on the fact that these developments are not a news item in either the Turkish or the world media. Let us simply note, and move on, that this silence shows that a people in Egypt who deserve to be taken into account is of no concern to today's world order and to the media as the voice of that order.

More than 7 years have passed since Sisi carried out his bloody coup, full of intrigue, against the only elected President in the country's history, the very President who had entrusted the Ministry of Defense to him in the name of the nation. After this coup, he crushed in the most merciless way every kind of opposition that could be directed against him; he has so far suppressed all opposition by imposing pressures on demonstrations, marches, every form of organization and freedom of expression that have not been seen in Egyptian history. Before and after the slightest demonstration, hundreds of people were being arrested and put in prison toward an uncertain future. The people had accepted this situation, and no one had the strength left to object to Sisi.

However, the apparent success of these policies of intimidation made Sisi thoroughly reckless in every field. The management of the economy promises the people nothing. The population living below the hunger line has exceeded 60 percent, and the country's resources are shared among a small minority. The abundance of people living below the hunger line, from one point of view, in fact from the point of view of Sisi and his supporters, makes it even easier to rule the country through repression. After all, there is no possibility of appreciating the bad economic management and of holding it to account in elections as a next step. The results of the next five elections are already in Sisi's pocket.

Not only is there no proper production in the country, but the great majority of the production that exists is carried out by companies belonging to the army, and there is no reliable, law-based economic environment in which the private sector could compete against this. For any businessman to have his property confiscated overnight on one pretext or another is among the most expected things, and no one has any guarantee against it.

Meanwhile the state is mired in a swamp of foreign debt it cannot get out from under. Even though it wants to cover its debts with further debt, nobody is willing to lend to Egypt. One of the options Sisi has is to lean harder on the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which supported his coup. But they too lack the strength to bear this heavy burden. Even the news of recent weeks about a new page being opened between Turkey and Egypt turned out to have been used by Sisi as a blackmail against these two countries. With this, Sisi gave the UAE and SA, in his own style, the message that he is not without options.

It appears that Sisi extracted something during Tahnoun bin Zayed's hasty visit to Egypt right after this news, but how far will that carry him?

In the meantime, last month Sisi began resorting to the most desperate, most pitiful means imaginable to create a source of income. This path is in fact also the cause of the outbreak of today's demonstrations. He announced that he would demolish houses and structures that violate zoning regulations. But in order not to demolish these houses, he demanded from each house a sum sufficient to buy that house from scratch. He pardoned those who paid, sent the demolition crews to the houses of those who could not pay, and began demolishing quite a number of houses. He had at least 70 mosques demolished on the grounds that they violated zoning regulations. Some of the demolished mosques had been built 90 years ago, and their sites have now been put up for sale.

As it appears, all the houses of Egypt, especially all the houses of its poor, are under the threat of being demolished once zoning violations are found in them whenever wanted. The language of threat used by Sisi, who says he is doing this in the name of restructuring Egypt, and his demolishing people's houses over their heads without offering any alternative, is causing a serious outburst of anger among the people.

In the face of bad economic management and tyranny, people have only one refuge left: their homes. His beginning to demolish even that, the fact that the demolition follows no plan at all, and the fact that houses declared in violation of zoning regulations are pardoned when a payment is made, lower Sisi in the eyes of his people from a statesman to the level of a mafia boss.

Moreover, according to the information exposed last year by Muhammad Ali, it is known that the same Sisi built extremely luxurious and expensive palaces for himself in the Sharm el-Sheikh region with the people's money. His admitting, without caring at all about the people's reaction, that he had built these palaces once this was exposed, and his announcing, as if challenging the people, that he would continue to do so, are being evaluated together with his demolishing the people's houses over their heads today. By acting this way Sisi seems, in fact, to be testing the limits of the power of a despot who takes everything from people while giving nothing.

It can be said that a new stage has been reached in these tests of strength, in which Sisi, who recognizes no rule, has raised the bar each time by relying too heavily on the people's fear. The people have overcome the wall of fear and have come to the point of thinking that what will happen to them cannot be worse than this. The demonstrations are taking place with the purest, simplest demands of the people, with no political demand, party or foreign backing, indeed despite all those centers of influence.

Perhaps, to use Marx's analogy for the proletariat, Sisi is facing the revolt of an Egyptian people who have "nothing to lose but their chains."