Last Updated, Wednesday, 2:55 p.m. | Citing evidence found on YouTube, Turkey’s Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, claimed on Tuesday that Israel was behind the military takeover in Egypt last month.

In remarks broadcast on Turkish television, Mr. Erdogan scolded Western democracies for failing to condemn the military coup that deposed Egypt’s elected, Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, and blamed Israeli influence. “What do they say in Egypt? ‘Democracy is not the ballot box,'” he said. “Who is behind this? Israel.”

Telling his listeners, “We have evidence,” Mr. Erdogan cited comments made two years ago by the Algerian-born French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who “is also Jewish,” as supposed proof of a longstanding Israeli plot to deny the Muslim Brotherhood power in Egypt, even if it won elections.

Don’t move! PM got evidence! – “Turkey has evidence that Israel was behind Egypt coup: Erdoğan” //t.co/zysThXcz9Q v @stefbrez — ilhan tanir (@WashingtonPoint) 20 Aug 13

Mr. Erdogan’s office later confirmed that he was referring to a YouTube video of remarks Mr. Lévy made in 2011 during a discussion of “Israel and the Arab Spring” with the Israeli politician Tzipi Livni at Tel Aviv University.

As can be seen in an edited copy of the video posted on YouTube last week with Turkish subtitles, Mr. Lévy did say at that forum, which was moderated by my colleague Ethan Bronner, that the Brotherhood should not be allowed to take power in Egypt.

Responding to a question about how he would view an electoral victory by the Brotherhood, Mr. Lévy compared such a possibility to the kind of “democratic coup” that allowed Hamas to take power in Gaza in 2006 and Hitler to become Germany’s chancellor in 1933. Decrying the “archaic, pre-fascist ideology” of the Muslim Brotherhood, he said: “Democracy, again, is not only elections. It is values.”

Asked directly, “If they were to win a legitimate election, you would urge the military not to allow them take power?” Mr. Lévy said:

I will urge the prevention of them coming to power by all sorts of means, yes. … I said that in Algeria and I don’t regret it. It opened a terrible period of disturbance, chaos, murders and so on, but I believe it would have been worse if we had let them come to power.

Although YouTube was officially blocked in Turkey for years, the ban has been lifted so Turks who followed their prime minister’s advice found it easy to access the clip on Tuesday.

It remains unclear why Mr. Erdogan interpreted comments from a French philosopher who holds no official position in his home country or in Israel as “evidence” of Israeli responsibility for the coup in Egypt. As my colleague Jodi Rudoren reported this week, Israeli officials have welcomed the coup and acknowledged waging a “diplomatic campaign urging Europe and the United States to support the military-backed government in Egypt despite its deadly crackdown on Islamist protesters.”

The response in Cairo to Mr. Erdogan’s remarks was predictably testy. As the journalist Menna Alaa reported on Twitter, a spokesman for the interim president installed by the Egyptian army replied that “Western agents shouldn’t be giving lessons in patriotism to Egyptians.”

A Cairene blogger who writes as Zeinobia noted that Mr. Erdogan’s use of Mr. Lévy, referred to as BHL, as a Zionist bogeyman seemed to come straight from a Mubarak-era playbook.

BHL is always the Zionist behind every plot in Mideast,Mubarak media was sharing his photo with MB and in Libya as a proof for Zionist plots — Zeinobia (@Zeinobia) 20 Aug 13

The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that Mr. Erdogan “also criticized Gulf countries that have provided financial aid to Egypt’s military government,” ostensibly to make up for threatened reductions in financial aid from the United States and Europe.

In a speech this week, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt went out of his way to thank the monarchs of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain for supporting his overthrow of Egypt’s democratically elected president.

On Tuesday, however, the activist filmmaker Aalam Wassef remixed video of General Sisi’s speech to show leading members of each of those royal families with senior Washington officials — highlighting what he called the irony of Egypt’s American-backed military rejecting criticism from the United States but welcoming support from five kingdoms that depend on the Pentagon for protection.