Post date: Aug 20, 2013 8:44:47 PM
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan says Israel was behind the ousting of Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.
ANKARA, TURKEY (AUGUST 20, 2013) (TURKISH PRIME MINISTRY POOL) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday (August 20) that he believed Israel had a hand in the Egyptian military's ousting of Mohamed Mursi from the presidency in July.
Erdogan, a fierce critic of the overthrow of the Islamist Mursi, told party members he feared "autocratic regimes" would take root if the West failed to respect election results.The Egyptian military's violent crackdown on Mursi's supporters has claimed almost 900 lives in the last week.
"What is behind it? Israel. Because, Israel, we have in our hands documentation. Before the 2011 elections, during a session in France, the justice minister and an intellectual from France, he's Jewish too, they used exactly this comment: 'even if the Muslim Brotherhood wins the election, they will not win because democracy is not the ballot box'," Erdogan told provincial leaders of his ruling AK Party in comments aired live by state broadcaster TRT.
Erdogan did not elaborate on what that sort of documentation he had or what it contained.
Turkey's ties with Israel have soured in recent years and hit a low in May 2010 when Israeli commandoes killed nine Turkish activists while storming the Mavi Marmara, a ship in a convoy seeking to break an Israeli naval blockade of Gaza.
Earlier this year, Erdogan called Zionism "a crime against humanity", prompting objections from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. President Barack Obamasubsequently orchestrated an Israeli apology for the Mavi Marmara raid.
At least two senior officials from the AK Party, which traces its roots to a bannedIslamist movement, suggested Jewish involvement in anti-government protests that rocked Turkey in late May and June.
Erdogan repeatedly blamed unnamed foreign circles for those protests, in what he deemed an anti-democratic effort to undo Turkey's last three general elections, in which AK increased its share of the vote each time.
"The West needs to grasp and learn a definition of democracy," Erdogan said.
"If it cannot grasp and learn it, the contradictions in the definition of democracy, these clashes will carry the world towards a different place. What is that? It will take it towards autocratic regimes. That is our concern," he said.
In Egypt, a spokesman for a pro-Muslim Brotherhood alliance said the death toll among supporters of Mursi, deposed by the military on July 3, was at about 1,400.