May 17, 2015

There is no doubt that the death sentence passed by an Egyptian court on former President Mohammed Morsi and more than 100 other defendants is “nothing but a charade,” as characterized by various human rights organizations and countries. As often is the case in dictatorships, the courts of general-turned-President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi — who grabbed power in a July 2013 military coup — are designed not to serve justice but rather to protect the regime by cracking down on opponents. That is why this death sentence, along with all other gross human rights violations by the Sisi regime (such as mass murder of peaceful protesters, political imprisonment and torture), should be condemned by the entire democratic world.

The boldest reaction to the death sentence for Morsi came from none other than Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In a rally in Istanbul on May 16, the day the Morsi verdict was announced, Erdogan slammed not just the Sisi regime in Egypt but also the West, which he saw as complicit.

“Unfortunately, Egypt has given a death sentence to a president elected with 52% of the vote. Egypt is returning to the old Egypt. The West, unfortunately, still does not reveal its stance against the coup leader Sisi. While Western countries have been abolishing the death penalty, they are watching the death sentences in Egypt in complete silence,” Erdogan said.

Erdogan also told his supporters that, in the midst of all this injustice, “This nation [Turkey] will be the one to set the tone; that's why your stance on June 7 is very important.” He, in other words, asked his followers to vote for his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the upcoming general elections for the sake of Egypt as well. The next day, the daily Star, one of many pro-Erdogan newspapers, underlined the connection with a banner headline: “Egypt’s fate is tied to June 7.”

These messages are not new, since both Erdogan and his AKP have been expressing solidarity with the former Morsi government and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood over the past three years, and especially since the June 2013 coup that toppled Morsi. For sure, this solidarity comes from the ideological affinity the AKP has with the Muslim Brotherhood — despite the fact that the AKP practices a relatively more modernized and secularized version of Islam than that of the Muslim Brotherhood. But it also comes from Erdogan’s belief that his fate and that of Morsi are somehow connected. For Erdogan is convinced that the forces that toppled Morsi would have toppled him as well had he not “stood firm” against them.