by WorldTribune Staff, July 21, 2016
Many in Egypt are not hiding the fact they would have liked to have seen the coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan succeed.
Erdogan is a staunch supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, banned in Egypt, and a large number of Egyptians were looking for a similar result to the political intervention in Cairo in 2013 led by current President Abdul Fatah Sisi that ousted president and Brotherhood ally Mohamed Morsi.
“I wish the world would now see Erdogan as we see him,” said Anissa Hassouna, an Egyptian lawmaker, adding the coup, though unsuccessful, helped her feel “vindicated” in her dislike for the Turkish president.
“I will not deny there was a lot of excitement,” said Dalia Youssef, the deputy chairwoman of the foreign affairs committee in Egypt’s Parliament.
“Everyone stayed up until three in the morning,” she said. “Many public figures,” she added, would be happy to see Erdogan ousted, so that Egypt could have “a better relationship with Turkey.”
Sisi’s government and Erdogan’s have had a frigid relationship since the Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed by Cairo.
“If the coup had been successful, I doubt very much that Cairo would have said, ‘oh what a pity,’ ” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “The relationship is that bad.”
Erdogan made a gesture of solidarity with the Muslim Brotherhood after the attempted coup was quashed by flashing the four-fingered salute associated with the 2013 movement pledging loyalty to Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Mahmoud Yehia, a member of the Egyptian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, blasted Erdogan’s criticism of Sisi’s government, and his insistence on calling the removal of Morsi a “coup” instead of a revolution. In Egypt, it is officially known as the June 30 Revolution.
“You can have an opinion but to act on it like this is too much,” Yehia said of Erdogan’s “attacks and talk about a coup.”
Mohamed Amin, a columnist for Al-Masry Al-Youm, a popular newspaper, said that the Turkish president, after the coup had failed, “gave the same stupid speech as Morsi. It was all the same talk about elected government and legitimacy.”