Category: Egypt

Erdogan speaks his mind on Egypt

By Salwa Samir – The Egyptian Gazette

Monday, June 6, 2011 04:42:46 PM

”]ISTANBUL – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged young Egyptian revolutionaries to select a president who can do what they want.

“You should select a president with characteristics like honesty and sincerity, capable of carrying out what you need. If you do so, you will gain a lot of support.”

In a meeting with the delegation of representatives of Egypt’s young revolutionaries who are currently visiting Turkey, Erdogan said that democracy guaranteed rights and basic freedoms, especially for women and children.

“This must be achieved immediately,” he told them, after finishing his last phase of electoral campaigns in Istanbul, ahead of the Turkey’s 17th general election, which will be held on June 12. It will be the first time Turkey hasn’t had early elections in 34 years.

The Turkish leader said that his Government would communicate with the young Egyptians, supporting women’s rights and sectors like the economy, “because we [Egypt and Turkey] have a long history”.

Erdogan, the leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party,

praised the Egyptian and Tunisian revolts and said that Turkey has backed these two countries, with protesters demanding their rights, right from the beginning.

“You did something important in Al Tahrir. I think that there are beautiful days ahead for Tunisia and Egypt. And I believe that you will take the right decisions to make this happen,” he told the revolutionaries via a Turkish-Arabic interpreter.

He urged the people of one religion “to respect the beliefs of people of other religions”.

“We reject the torching of churches and mosques,” he said, quoting a saying of the Prophet Mohamed.

Answering a question from one of the group about how Egypt can apply democracy and fight corruption, he said: “You should begin democracy with the citizens in the streets.”

Erdogan is planning to visit Egypt and other Arab countries after the June 12 elections, where he will meet with officials, in order to discuss ways to ensure the mistakes of the past don’t happen again.

Also on Sunday, the Egyptian delegation were welcomed by the supporters of Erdogan, who then made a speech as part of his electoral campaign.

As the delegation went up on stage, Erdogan’s supporters applauded them heartily and the revolutionaries waved in acknowledgement.

These revolutionaries, who arrived in Turkey on Friday, had been invited by the Turkish Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, in co-ordination with the Turkish Foreign Ministry, in order to gain an insight into how Turkey runs its political and economic affairs.

Their visit, which lasts until tomorrow, aims to give the young Egyptians an up-close look at the political and economic systems in Turkey, giving them the chance to observe the electoral campaigning process, as Turkish political parties head into parliamentary elections next Sunday. Egypt is also preparing for parliamentary elections in September.

via Erdogan speaks his mind on Egypt – The Egyptian Gazette.

June 7, 2011
Egypt’s Tahrir youths ask Gül for Turkish university

Representatives of youth groups who took part in the Jan. 25 revolt in Egypt have asked President Abdullah Gül for the establishment of a Turkish university in their country, saying that such a university would serve as a symbol of the rich Turkish culture.

President Gül met with the group from the “January 25 Tahrir Youth Leaders” on Saturday at the presidential Tarabya Kiosk residence, where he told them that there is no place for authoritarianism in the Islamic world. He also urged rulers of Arab countries to make reforms for more freedom.

“Sadly, the battle [for democracy] continues in some countries today. I would like to remind rulers in Muslim Arab countries of the necessity of being realistic, of perceiving the world better and of seeing that there is already no place for authoritarian regimes in the Islamic world,” Gül told the group.

Abdallah Helmy, a founding member of the Revolutionary Youth Union, also delivered a speech on behalf of the visiting group and underlined the presence of strong ties between his country and Egypt. Joining forces and cooperating, these two countries can change many things in the region, Helmy said, while urging Gül to further bolster relations between the people of Egypt and Turkey.

“We request from you an initiative for the establishment of a Turkish university in Egypt. Let this university constitute the symbol of the rich Turkish culture in this way.” Helmy said. “At the same time, I’m calling for the opening of either a department of al-Azhar University [on a campus to be opened] in Turkey,” he said, referring to the centuries-old prestigious university based in Cairo.

The time is ripe for building a strategic partnership between Egypt and Turkey, Helmy argued, stating that it is now time to take steps for the future of the people of the two countries.

In his speech, Gül, meanwhile, stressed that governments which do not allow for full freedom in their countries must lead these kinds of revolutions and reforms. He said such governments will eventually be forced to adopt reforms in the face of strong public resistance against them. Citing bloodshed and casualties in these countries, he said these incidents “indeed deeply sadden us.”

The president said that, in order to end this violence as soon as possible, rulers must first respect their own people and take steps in line with the demands of the people, so their countries come out of this process stronger.

“Everyone is aware that I am speaking about countries such as Syria and Libya,” Gül said, noting that Turkey is closely monitoring developments in Egypt. He stated that Turkish-Egyptian relations will continue to be strong and the two countries will always benefit from each other’s experience.

“There will be a multi-party system in Egypt from now on and whoever the nation wants will rule the country,” Gül said. He added that all nations had overcome their fears and were working hard to be ruled by robust and respected administrations.

via Egypt’s Tahrir youths ask Gül for Turkish university.

June 6, 2011
Egyptian revolutionary youth see Turkey as model for Egypt

İPEK YEZDANİ

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Members of Egyptian revolutionary youth groups who are visiting Turkey and meeting high-ranking state officials said Sunday that they are looking at Turkey as a role model for the future of their country.

“Everybody in Egypt sees Turkey as a model for the future of Egypt, this is a widespread thought. The fact that Turkey has a secular regime and is run by an Islamic party is a very good example for us,” group spokesman Abdallah Helmy, 34, told the Hürriyet Daily News in an interview Sunday.

“[It is] not just [about] the economic and social systems, we even take the relations between the army and the Constitution in Turkey as an example,” said Helmy, who is the program officer of the Reform and Development Party.

While in Turkey, the group is meeting with officials including President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

According to Helmy, the Islamic law system shariah does not pose an obstacle for Egypt to take Turkey, which has a secular regime, as a role model.

“The Islamic shariah regime is only a framework for the legislation in Egypt and it is the identity of the country according to the constitution. We have a consensus in the country that Islamic shariah must be the framework for legislation. At the same time, however, we agree that our Christian friends must have their own framework of legislation,” Helmy said.

Lessons from Serbian revolutionaries

The process that led to revolution in Egypt did not start on Jan. 25 in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square as is widely believed, said Waleed Rashed, 27, one of the founders of the April 6 Youth movement. Instead, he said, it started in spring 2008 with the setting up of an Egyptian Facebook group to support workers in the industrial town of El-Mahalla El-Kubra, who went on strike April 6, 2008.

“We have been reading about the lives of people like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and taking lessons from the revolutionist movements everywhere around the world since then,” Rashed said, referring to two leaders of the civil-rights movement in the United States.

According to Rashed, one of the members of the movement also went to Serbia in January 2009 and learned from the experience of the “Otpor!” (Resistance!) revolutionary group, which overthrew Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2001.

The other big initiative behind the youth revolution of Egypt was “We are all Khaled Saeed” group, according to Abdurrahman Jad, 23. The group was set up on Facebook to commemorate a 28-year-old who died at the hands of the Egyptian police in 2010. “Khaled Saeed was killed by the police in a brutal way, he was the one who sparked the revolution in Egypt,” said Jad.

The Khaled Saeed Facebook group took the initiative to declare Jan. 25 a day of Egyptian revolt to condemn police brutality. Bloggers, Facebook and Twitter users, as well as activist groups and associations, quickly answered the call. Although few believed it could actually happen, the initiative snowballed to become Egypt’s largest uprising in its modern history.

Women protesters took men out of their shops to attend the rally

Mona Shahein, 26, is one of the Egyptian women protesters who led the organization of the meetings in Tahrir Square via Facebook and Twitter. “Before the revolution, we all changed our Facebook profiles and put the picture of Khaled Saeed on our pages. Everybody associated himself or herself with Saeed, because he was like any of us,” she said.

According to Shahein, when the revolution started on Jan. 25, it was women protesters who were calling people out onto the streets to attend the march. “Girls were taking people out of their cars, out of their shops, and telling them to attend the rally with the young people, and people were joining us like this,” she said. “While we marched our number increased, and when we realized that thousands of people were joining us, we understood that this was not a protest anymore, it was a revolution.”

“The Egyptian nation is one voice now, this is the main reason why we succeeded in Tahrir Square – we forgot our ideologies, we forgot our cultural or religious identities, we just focused on our goal, which was the revolution. Now we want to focus on how Egypt can make progress as a whole nation,” said Tame Ashry, a 27-year-old Egyptian filmmaker who also took part in the revolution process.

“We must remind ourselves that the revolution is not complete yet, our new aim is to rebuild our country,” Rashed added.

The members of the Egyptian revolutionary youth group met Saturday in Istanbul with President Gül, who told them the fire they fueled in Egypt and Tunisia has enlightened the whole Islamic world, daily Hürriyet reported.

The group said Gül gave them very important recommendations and told them “to focus on the will of the people.” Members of the group were scheduled to meet Prime Minister Erdoğan during his rally Sunday in Istanbul’s Kazlıçeşme district.

via Egyptian revolutionary youth see Turkey as model for Egypt – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review.

June 6, 2011
Egyptian revolutionary youth delegation to visit Turkey

A delegation of representatives of the youth of the 25 January revolution is to visit Turkey on Friday, aiming to gain insights into how the country runs its political and economic affairs. The delegation is visiting at the invitation of the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, and in coordination with the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

The visit, which will last until Wednesday, aims to give the Egyptian youth an up-close look at the political and economic systems in Turkey, and to give them the chance to observe the electoral campaigning process as Turkish political parties head into parliamentary elections slated for 12 June.

The delegation was invited in March, during Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s visit to Cairo, where he met with a group of revolutionary youth. The visit coincides with Egypt’s preparations for the parliamentary elections slated for September.

The Egyptian delegation will be meeting with government officials and representatives of Turkish civil society organizations. They are also expected to meet with President Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Finance and Economy Ali Babacan, as well as a number of MPs from different parties and representatives of major political parties in Turkey.

Meanwhile, Egyptian ambassador to Turkey Abdel Rahman Salah al-Din welcomed the invitation of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu to the delegation, pointing to Turkey’s supportive role towards the Egyptian revolution since the very beginning. He also pointed to the fact that President Gul was the first head of state to visit Egypt following the revolution.

Salah al-Din said he hoped the visit would help demonstrate the distinguished relations between Egypt and Turkey, which would serve as a model for relations between Middle Eastern and African countries.

Translated from the Arabic Edition

via Egyptian revolutionary youth delegation to visit Turkey | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today’s News from Egypt.

June 5, 2011
tehran times : Writer calls for Iran-Egypt-Turkey strategic alliance

Writer calls for Iran-Egypt-Turkey strategic alliance

Tehran Times International Desk

TEHRAN — A prominent Egyptian thinker and writer has said that considering the current sensitive situation in the Middle East there is an urgent need to form a strategic alliance between Iran, Egypt and Turkey.

According to IRNA, in a meeting called “Popular Arab Uprising and its Effect on the Future of Palestine” on Sunday, Fahmy Howeidy called for the establishment of a strategic alliance between Iran, Egypt and Turkey as these three regional powers can influence the future of Middle East and its political equations.

“This strategic alliance between these three states is a triangle of power which can play a major role vis-à-vis the Zionist regime and the United States,” the Egyptian intellectual and political analyst added.

Commenting on the current situation in the Middle East he said, “The waning influence of Israel and U.S. in the region is producing more confusion and weakness for these traditional powers, resulting in a more promising future for the Palestinians.”

Howeidy called for more coordination between these countries and said: “”The best beginning for the formation of such a strategic alliance is to strengthen trade and economic relations among these three countries.”

He pointed to some positive changes in recent years such as Turkey’s policy towards the Palestinian and Iran’s clear stance in support of Palestine, and said, “After the fall of Hosni Mubarak, Israel is going to be more isolated and Egypt can follow Iran and Turkey in supporting Palestinians.”

via tehran times : Writer calls for Iran-Egypt-Turkey strategic alliance.

May 16, 2011
In throwing its weight behind Egypt’s protests, did Turkey overbalance?

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu a former academic, prefers slightly more neutered catchphrases like "strategic depth" and "interdependence" to describe its involvement in the Middle East. Adem Altan / AFP

“You are a resister of the 25th hour,” the leader of the European Parliament’s Green faction told Baroness Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, during a February debate on the upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit may as well have been talking about the reaction of the West as a whole. With the White House refusing to call for Hosni Mubarak’s resignation until the last moment, and with the EU having failed, yet again, to articulate a clear stance, only a few western countries found themselves on the right side of history when Mubarak’s rule finally came to a close.

That one of those countries was Turkey, a Nato member and an EU candidate, and that the person who articulated its position was none other than its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is more of a surprise than meets the eye.

Erdogan’s Justice and Development (AKP) government has never placed a high premium on human rights and democratisation with regard to the Middle East. Stability – the one word that Turkish officials mentioned more than any other whenever they spoke of their country’s policy towards the region – seemed to override all other concerns. It became, essentially, a byword for non-interference. Turkey buried its head in the sand during the violence that followed the flawed 2009 presidential election in Iran, calling the electoral dispute, as well as its fallout, an “internal matter”. It turned a blind eye to human-rights abuses and autocratic rule in places like Syria and, for that matter, Egypt. Finally, it has looked the other way in Sudan, with Erdogan himself insisting that there has been no genocide in Darfur and that, in any case, a Muslim – in this case, Sudanese president Omar al Bashir – “could not perpetrate such a thing”.

Turkish policymakers have tried to shield themselves from the criticism that such statements and policies have inevitably provoked in the West and, to a lesser extent, in Turkey itself, by citing the importance of discretion.

“We’re certainly not going to promote human rights and democracy the way the American neocons have,” Suat Kiniklioglu, the spokesman for the Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told me a year ago. “If the aim is to produce results, we find it more effective to speak face to face. We prefer to talk to them behind closed doors rather than criticising them through media outlets.”

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s tireless foreign minister, sounded a similar note when he told a Turkish journalist that “we tell our counterparts the importance of being respectful of human rights. But we don’t do it in public; this is a requirement of sincerity.” (What Davutoglu forgot to mention was that Turkey had made an exception for Israel, repeatedly – and very publicly – chastising its government for its treatment of the Palestinians.) Asked whether Turkish diplomats really raised human-rights issues with their interlocutors in countries such as Syria or Iran, Kiniklioglu said that they did – but that “it’s not at the top of our agenda”.

via In throwing its weight behind Egypt’s protests, did Turkey overbalance? – The National.

April 22, 2011