Brotherhood and Erdogan

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a personality that won many hearts in the Arab world. Arabs saw the Turkish prime minister as an honest and a successful political figure and someone who was on their side. However, their love for Erdogan did not last long.
The reason for loss of support can mainly be attributed to Erdogan’s failure to stop massacres of the Syrians at the hands of Assad regime. Apart from this he also failed to extract a high price from Israel over killings of its citizens. His threats proved empty. His former pro-Gaddafi stand in the Libyan revolution alienated many in the Arab world. His description as a “second Karbala” to what happened in Bahrain and his support for militant demonstrators did not go down well.
Despite all this, many in the Arab world still view Erdogan with respect and some don’t blame him, realizing the situation in Syria difficult to be addressed by Turkey alone.
Now he has entered the Egyptian front, adopting a position that could be described biased in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood. He may be the only one in the world who has adopted this position.
We won’t argue about his legitimacy and relations with deposed Egyptian President Muhammad Mursi. Egyptians say that they have removed Mursi because of his bad performance and the dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood on the state and the president’s lack of respect for democracy that brought him to power.
When Erdogan supports this, he is in fact antagonizing most Egyptians and Arab forces who disagree with him. And if the Turkish leader thinks that it was unjust to remove Mursi, and it is his right to believe so, then his best role should be of a mediator rather than taking sides.
He knows he can’t change anything in Egypt, and doesn’t have the tools to ensure Mursi’s return as it failed to bring down the Assad regime despite being a regional power, although, Syria is a quarter of the size of Egypt.
The Muslim Brothers are using Turkey and want to use Erdogan to play a negative role. Erdogan will be disappointed later on when Brothers will enter some kind of a deal with the military to protect some of their interests. The Muslim Brothehood knows very well Mursi will not return and the other political forces will not allow him to form another government, and nobody believes he will win again after a year of failure.
The involvement of Erdogan in the regional politics will only cost him popularity in the Arab street which is already dwindling whereas he can actually play a more objective role in the interests of Egyptians.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul is on record of saying that Egypt and Turkey resemble the two sides of one apple, and it’s in the interest of Ankara to support a regional system where Cairo stands as one of its allies and without being subjected to intervention.
Erdogan should intervene in a positive way. He should mediate between different sides rather than taking a rigid and biased stand. This might be the best thing he can do and give his friends, the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, a lecture in governance, related to the Turkish model of tolerance which Erdogan ushered in through his economic and political policies.
What Mursi did in a year has no relation with democracy which brought him to power. Mursi failed to make friends, including the Salafists, who left him even before he was deposed.

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