Turkish Islamists Angered By Arab Gulf Stance on Egypt
Turkey’s isolation over Egypt has forced it to rethink its regional policies.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and members of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) continue to blast the West over the Egyptian coup. Conspiracy theorizing in Turkey’s Islamist and pro-government media as to who is behind the toppling of democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi is at its peak, with the US and Israel cast in the usual role of villain.
Part of Erdogan’s current and persistent narrative is that the West failed to help Morsi at a time of dire economic need, the implication being that this was part of a plan to stop the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam not just in Egypt, but in the region as a whole.
Continue in this vein as they may, Erdogan and members of his government are revealingly silent concerning the news that Gulf States, headed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have pledged at least $8 billion in emergency aid to Egypt to prop up the transitional government installed by the military.
This silence against key Arab countries that applauded the ouster of Morsi and dealt a serious blow to the Muslim Brotherhood indicates that there is a limit for the AKP as to who it will criticize, since it can ill afford to alienate major Middle East powers at a time when Ankara’s regional influence is markedly on the wane.
