A supporter of Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi demonstrates in front of police separating him from anti-Sissi protesters near the Egyptian Embassy in Athens in December 2015. (Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images)

Human rights activists fighting a wave of repression across the Middle East are bracing for an American president they fear will empower autocrats and roll back U.S. support for democracy initiatives in the region.

President-elect Donald Trump has shown little regard for human rights issues, activists say, and has praised authoritarian leaders in countries including Turkey and Egypt.

The Obama administration — which sold arms to despots in the region even as they cracked down on opponents — has disappointed many rights advocates. But President Obama has also pressed Middle East governments to curb abuses and enact democratic change.

Trump, by contrast, has not only lauded some of the region’s strongmen but also called for torturing terrorism suspects and killing the families of Islamic State fighters as a way to defeat the extremist group. His rhetoric has alarmed local human rights defenders who say their situation is tenuous enough already.

[Trump’s favorite dictators: In reviled tyrants, he finds traits to praise]

A man walks past graffiti with an image of jailed human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja on a wall in Sitra, Bahrain, in September 2014. (Hasan Jamali/AP)

“The most repressive times we lived through have been while Obama was president,” said Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information in Cairo. Eid is one of about a dozen prominent rights activists under investigation in Egypt and is banned from leaving the country.

But now that Trump has been elected, Eid said, “what is coming is worse.”

According to Human Rights Watch, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi has presided over the most serious human rights crisis in his country’s modern history. The government he now heads, which came to power in a military coup in 2013, has jailed political opponents, launched a campaign of mass arrests and stifled protests.

Obama halted, then later resumed, U.S. military aid to Egypt. But Trump, after meeting Sissi in September, hailed the Egyptian leader as a “fantastic guy” in an interview with the Fox Business Network.

[The politics of restoring Egypt’s military aid]

Sissi, who was defense minister when Egypt’s elected civilian government was toppled, was the first foreign leader to congratulate Trump the morning after his election.

“It seems like the United States under Trump will give Sissi a green light to oppress more,” Eid said. “The United States will not hold Egypt’s regime accountable for repression, and it is obvious Trump is developing stronger ties with tyrants worldwide.”

Critics of the Obama administration say the United States never unequivocally pressured Middle East allies to rein in abuses, even as governments moved to crush the democracy uprisings of the Arab Spring.

Obama had vowed to back off from the democracy rhetoric of his predecessor, George W. Bush, ­preferring to more quietly encourage change “in a way that strengthens bilateral relationships,” according to Brian Katulis, a ­national security fellow at the Center for American Progress.

As places such as Libya, Syria and Yemen subsequently descended into chaos, the administration’s focus shifted to ensuring that other countries in the region cooperated on counterterrorism and the war against the Islamic State. Military aid and weapons sales resumed to Egypt and Bahrain.

Hisham Kassem, a Cairo-based publisher and political analyst, said that while the United States “put on a good show for the world,” its efforts to promote civil and political rights have always been limited. “Our relationship with the United States was always built on security concerns,” he said. “I don’t think the fact that Obama was president restrained anyone from doing anything.”

But activists say that while the administration’s support for human rights ebbed, they could still engage with U.S. diplomats and raise their concerns.

With Trump, they worry there will not even be a dialogue.

His comments on the Middle East have included pledging to destroy the Islamic State and rip up the nuclear deal with Iran. There is no indication he recognizes the work of local rights activists.

“At least when you met with [the Obama] administration, you could use human rights language,” said Maryam al-Khawaja, an activist in Bahrain, where an uprising in 2011 was brutally suppressed.

“The only reason I am not still in jail is because one of the actors that got involved in my case, that called for my release, was the U.S. government,” said Khawaja, who was arrested in Bahrain in 2014. “With a Trump administration, I’m not sure whether we could meet with [them] and discuss human rights. I doubt that administration will use anything close to human rights discourse.”

In a poll conducted in nine Arab countries, just 14 percent of respondents said they thought Trump would have a positive impact on U.S. policy in the region. The survey was published by the Arab Center Washington D.C., a nonprofit group, on Nov. 1.

In Turkey, a U.S. ally, rights advocates are also unsure what to expect. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has cracked down on dissent, jailing tens of thousands since a failed coup attempt in July. Erdogan initially spoke out against Trump’s rhetoric about Muslims but has since congratulated him on his victory and criticized those protesting his election.

With Trump in the White House, the United States “will be less concerned about human rights, less concerned about democracy, less concerned about ­civil society and other things,” said Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a Turkish human rights lawyer. “And this is a huge loss.”

Turkey is also a recipient of U.S. military largesse. But the Obama administration’s “sporadic criticism worked very well in Turkey,” Cengiz said.

“They criticized the terrible situation for freedom of expression and the media, and some journalists were set free from prison,” he said. “We are losing this leverage. This is a bad thing for us.”

Heba Habib in Stockholm and Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo contributed to this report.

Read more:

What happened when Trump met his favorite Middle East strongman

Republican debate highlights GOP obsession with Egypt’s Sissi

Under Egypt’s Sissi, crackdown on human rights groups expands

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