As the U.S. State Department performs all sorts of semantic gymnastics to avoid defining the Egyptian army’s ouster of the country’s Islamist President Mohamed Morsi as a coup, politicians in Turkey have not only recognized it as such but also condemned it in the strongest possible terms. In a speech on July 5, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to split hairs, insisting that “no matter where or against whom, coups are damaging and inhuman, and directed against the people, the national will and democracy.” He also took Western countries to task for insisting that Egyptians’ disaffection with Morsi, as well as the sheer scale of the recent protests against him, justified, in some sense, his overthrow. “There is no such a thing as a democratic coup,” Erdogan quipped. “It is as much a paradox as the living dead.” By refusing to call things by their name, he added, the West, and the E.U. in particular, “had once again disregarded its own principles.” Even before Egypt’s military brass served Morsi with a 48-hour ultimatum — the prelude to their intervention — Turkish officials rushed to the embattled Egyptian President’s defense. In Istanbul, the youth branch of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) called on its followers to attend pro-Morsi rallies. Several of these have since taken place in conservative neighborhoods across the city. For a while — and thanks in no small part to a number of AKP officials who took to Twitter to get out the message — #TurkeyWithMorsi was one of the most trending hashtags in Turkey. Today, with Morsi in detention, and with the specter of civil war hovering over the Arab world’s biggest country, the Turkish government appears to be the only major regional player still loyal to Egypt’s deposed President. (PHOTOS: Cairo Massacre: Dozens of Pro-Morsi Supporters Killed in Clashes With Egypt’s Military) Aside from its insistence that a government, once elected, can only be deposed through the ballot box, Ankara has a number of other reasons to stand by Morsi. In January![]()
