"Egypt's Loss" by Ibrahim Kalin

The following is an article by Irbrahim Kalin, a senior advisor to Turkey's Prime Minister, on the current crisis in Egypt. First published in Today's Zaman.Please note that the article does not necessarily reflect the views of Forward Thinking and the opinions and analysis expressed within belong solely to the author. "Egypt's loss"On July 3, all Egyptians, whether pro- or anti-Morsi, lost a revolution -- the Egyptian revolution of Jan. 25 that set a new course in the political history of the Middle East.The violent interruption of the process of democratization in Egypt sets a terrible precedent for civilian-military relations and changes the dynamics of “people power” in the region.Western democracies have failed by supporting this coup and betrayed their own values and principles. While they scramble to come up with excuses to justify a military coup in the heartland of Arab politics, they are sending a terrible message to Arab and Muslim nations: That, in the Muslim world, they will only support the kind of democracy that conforms to their interests. While the scale and the circumstances are different, this is reminiscent of the Western position toward the Algerian elections of 1991, when the Islamic Salvation Front won about 50 percent of the vote in the first-ever multiparty parliamentary elections since Algeria's independence. The Algerian military intervened, annulled the democratic elections, took over and was supported by Western governments on the grounds that Algeria would have become a religious state. The ensuing civil war led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.The Western reaction wasn't any different in the 2006 Palestinian elections, when this time Hamas, another nightmare for the Western-secularist establishment, won a free and fair election in the Palestinian territories. There was no military to stage a coup in Palestine, so Western countries, backed by their Arab allies and Israel, issued a death order for the democratically elected Hamas government. They introduced political and economic measures to ensure the failure of the government. The result has been a bitter political division of the Palestinian population between the West Bank and Gaza, a deeper economic crisis, further dispossession and wider disenchantment with democracy and rule of law.Will it be different in Egypt? Let's hope so. Let's hope the Egyptians will have the wisdom to save their country from chaos, infighting, polarization and military tutelage. But as much as we'd like to be optimistic, the bitter truth is that the July 3 military coup in Egypt has instituted not the power of the people but the might of the military.There is no denying the fact that the coup has been called for and supported by many Egyptians. Prominent political figures, including Mohamed ElBaradei, the Noble Peace Prize laureate touted by the West as the “most prominent liberal” in Egypt, have worked in earnest to convince both the army and Western governments of the “necessity of removing Morsi.” Millions of the Tamarod Movement celebrated when they saw Egypt's first-ever democratically elected president ousted by a general with the blessings of the sheikh of al-Azhar, the Coptic pope, the Salafi al-Nour Party and members of the judiciary.But it is one thing to oppose a president or government and another to call in the army to remove it. Here is the dangerous path Egypt is taking: What will happen when the pro-coup parties have a disagreement among themselves? Will they call in the army every time they have a political crisis? How will they claim to rule in the name of the people when no member of the current transition government has ever entered an election? If it's a question of legitimacy, then who has more? Morsi, who won 52 percent of the vote in 2012, or those appointed by the military as president, vice president, prime minister, etc.?Those who staged and supported the July 3 coup should realize that this is not instituting the power of the people but the power of the military. This is a big loss for Egypt and us all.More worrying is the message all this sends to the Muslim Brotherhood and the millions of people who voted for them. If their votes mean nothing, how can we expect them to believe in democracy? How are they supposed to nurture a culture of democracy and pluralism against a brutal campaign of demonization, smearing, alienation and military intervention?This is not about Morsi or the Freedom and Justice Party. This is about supporting democracy and civilian rule in Egypt.