Before some smartass accuse me of posting articles written by Islamist bigots, author of this article is an Armenian.
Pharaohs of the West and the East
A tragedy took place last night in Egypt. Hoping that we would wake up to a beautiful summer morning, we instead saw that the military administration murdered 10 people in the raids in two squares. Unfortunately, the death toll increased to 120 in a very short time.
The number of wounded was reported as 7,000. I hope this number does not increase any more.
The West committed a huge mistake by supporting the coup in Egypt. Unless a radical change of attitude is adopted, I believe this might be a turning point for the Western civilization. Supporting a coup, which is basically a betrayal of democratic values, remaining silent to the massacres by the coup administration and legitimizing the coup and the massacres in the media could be a turning point for Western democracy and a return to its dark ages.
Why am I saying this? The Egyptian people, getting rid of the remnants of the colonial period and its dictators, have started a bold and promising process of democratization. Furthermore, they did this by nonviolent methods and in reliance on technological tools, including social media. This referred to a mindset that would embrace the democratic tendency which is the major claim and tenet of Western civilization. No one would argue that democracy would arrive in Egypt in a week. But at the very least a process free of dictators has begun.
Normally, the West should have supported this development given that it wanted to keep Islam away from extremes like al-Qaeda and make it compatible with Western democratic values. What else could have been a better opportunity to achieve this?
However, in his first year in office, President Mohammed Morsi, the first democratically elected president of Egypt, was ousted by a coup that the West supported. Following the coup, queues at gas stations disappeared. Economic aid was extended to the coup makers. All praised the coup makers and blamed the victims. What was it they were hoping for? A movement which was trying to engage in politics came to power after a painful struggle. This should have pleased the West because radicalism becomes marginalized where politics get stronger.
But this did not happen. Another massacre was committed yesterday. Some commentators in Turkey criticized the Muslim Brotherhood for not bowing to the coup makers. Those who made remarks supportive of democracy in the Gezi crisis, those who declared Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a dictator actually supported violence and the coup in Egypt. Not only that, Erdoğan and Turkey were the only leader and state to stand against the Egyptian coup in the world.
This is pretty confusing, isn't it?
Actually, no, it is not. It is as old as world history that the mindsets suffering from the entanglements of realpolitik twist reality to serve their interests. No one should be surprised by that.
Now the only hope that Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and the coup supporters held is a violent response by the Brotherhood. This has not happened thus far. Gen. Sisi and his supporters are having difficulties now that the psychological threshold has been passed. The Muslim Brotherhood should be dragged into violence because it believes this is the only way out for it. And it is actually right. When violence is answered with violence, the stronger win and no one questions who was right in the first place. I hope the Brotherhood does not make this mistake because its patience is really being tested.
If you resist coups and massacres anywhere in the world, this means you support peace at home, because no coup maker and no pharaoh would stand against prolonged opposition. Looking at the matter from the perspective of human rights and democratic values makes the whole discussion simpler.
http://todayszaman.com/columnist-323521-pharaohs-of-the-west-and-the-east.html