Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the first to express his vocal opposition to the military coup in Egypt this July, which deposed duly elected President Mohammed Morsi. Given the paltry responses that the rest of the world somehow stammered out, Turkey was conspicuous for its vociferous and blunt denunciation of what took place in Egypt. It did not hesitate to call it what it was — a coup — and even launched a full frontal attack against all those parties that seemed to accept what had happened there.
When the Egyptian army responded with brute force against its opponents, Erdogan went so far as to blame the silent bystanders, especially the United States and the European Union, for failing to protect the protesters. “What right do you have now to talk about democracy, about universal values, about human rights, about freedom?” he asked, tying their reluctance to respond to events in Egypt with the attitude toward President Bashar al-Assad's actions in Syria and their complacent inaction toward the suffering of the Palestinians. If the West fails to act in response to the events in Egypt, he determined, democratic values would be called into question throughout the entire world.
