Erdogan, Egypt’s Coup And the Israeli Connection

When Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan argued, in an Aug. 20 speech, that Israel is “behind” the military coup in Egypt, he certainly did not make a great impression in the West. Various media commentators, including a contributor to Al-Monitor, blamed him for bigotry against the Jewish state, even likening him to Borat, the notorious anti-Semitic character played by Sacha Baron Cohen in the famous 2006 mockumentary. Meanwhile, White House  spokesman Josh Earnest criticized Erdogan’s comment as “offensive and unsubstantiated and wrong.” 

Yet I still wonder, despite all the urge for political correctness, whether Erdogan was really delusional on this issue. Was he, in other words, really out of touch with reality when he pointed to a link between Egypt’s coup and Israel’s agenda?

Let’s see. First, I should admit that Erdogan’s “evidence” for his claim, a 2011 press conference by Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, is actually irrelevant. As it can be seen on YouTube, this “evidence” only proves that Levy, out of a peculiar commitment to “democratic values,” supports secular-leaning military coups against elected Islamist parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood. This certainly does not prove an actual collaboration between Egypt’s bloody coup and Levy, let alone the Israeli government. (In fact, one must at least give Levy credit for condemning “the bloodbath” perpetrated by “Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his acolytes” in an Aug. 20 piece of his.)

However, a mere sketch of Middle East news of the past few weeks suggests that Erdogan perhaps was onto something with his controversial remarks, although he neither articulated nor substantiated it well. For example, on Aug. 18 The New York Times published a story titled, “Israel Escalating Efforts to Shape Allies’ Strategy.”