Summary: The July 15 attempted coup d’etat in Turkey was poorly planned and executed, and promptly collapsed. The Erdogan regime is taking advantage of post- coup atmospherics to neutralize its enemies and enhance the centralization of power in the office of the President.
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It is striking that this analysis does not refer to the Arabs – even Egypt – or Israel. Turkey seems to have moved away from concern with the Arab world, reverting in this respect to the world view of Ataturk. Even for the “Eurasianists” the Arabs are not a prominent factor compared with Iran and Russia.
A report on the New Arab website “Us and Them” by the Palestinian commentator Azmi Bishara (now based in Qatar) argues that compared with the Turks “Arab political elites have a long way to go over their attitudes on military coups…” The refusal of the Turkish people, and even the opposition parties, to listen to the claims of the putschists that they were protecting democracy “is the exact opposite of how Egyptian opposition parties behaved in 2013. The Egyptian opposition were all too willing to collude with the ancien regime and the 2013 military coup to get rid of its opponents.”
A proposed statement by the UN Security Council condemning the attempted coup, which would have required the consensus of all fifteen members, was blocked by Egypt. Egypt refused the proposed call to “respect the democratically elected government of Turkey”, presumably because it would have been seen as implying that the Sisi regime itself lacked legitimacy because it came to power by a military coup.