For four months Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has seized every opportunity to inveigh against what he describes as the “military coup” in Egypt. The tens of millions of Egyptians who marched against Muslim Brotherhood rule appear to mean nothing to a man who has variously announced that the Rabaa Al-Adaweya four finger salute is a “symbol of freedom across the world” and that the trial of “Dr Morsi” is illegitimate because he remains Egypt's president. The ultra-conservative port city of Trabzon provided the stage for Erdogan's latest outburst, part of his by now trademark invective against post-3 July Egypt. Turkey's prime minister did not think the Egyptian government would respond to his continued affronts. Perhaps he had been encouraged in this belief by the fact that, though Cairo's patience was wearing thin, it had refrained from making any serious response. Initially it did appear Ankara had begun to realise the ramifications of the breach it was creating with Egypt — witness the return in September of Hüsayin Avni Botsali, the Turkish ambassador to Cairo. Botsali had earlier been recalled to Ankara “for consultations”. Egypt responded in kind, announcing that its own ambassador was unlikely to return. Despite this hiccup Ahmet Davutoglu, architect of the Erdogan government's “zero problems” foreign policy, failed to get the message. And there are few members of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) bold enough to criticise their leader. They know that to do so would place their political career at risk. So temporary hiccup over, Turkey's self-styled Padishah and heir to the Ottoman Empire Erdogan persisted only to find what he least expected to happen happening. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry followed through on its warnings and expelled the Turkish ambassador. Ankara railed and threatened to take escalatory measures. In the end it reciprocated and then let loose its cowed media to give vent to Erdogan's pent up rage over a stream of failures in the Levant and North Africa. One government mouthpiece, Yeni Safak, blamed General Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi for the rupture in relations with Turkey. The sentiment was echoed by the Milli Gazete which denounced the “illegitimate” action taken by the “coup authorities” and accused Al-Sisi of provoking a diplomatic crisis with Ankara. Yeni Safak went into more detail. It wrote that the decision to expel the Turkish ambassador taken by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) — as opposed to the Egyptian government — was a response to Turkey's support for Mohamed Morsi as the elected president and its opposition to the arrests of Muslim Brotherhood supporters and to the violence that accompanied the break-up of the Rabaa Al-Adaweya and Nahda Square sit-ins in August. A few refused to toe the government line. They were mostly found on social networking sites and their disagreement took the form of sarcastic jokes and cartoons. One had Ankara notifying the Egyptian charge d'affaires that the Egyptian ambassador to Turkey had been declared persona non grata and would have to leave the country by 29 November. It was an ultimatum easily fulfilled given the Egyptian ambassador had not been in Ankara since August. Some quarters of the press were more outspoken. The anti-government Yurt blazoned the headline “Egypt defies the AKP government” while a Yanicaq headline declared more wryly “Turkish ambassador: persona non grata.” The widely circulating Cumhuriyet was boldest. Beneath the headline, “The expulsion of the Turkish ambassador and Turkey's international isolation” a columnist remarked that he was reminded of Mussolini's famous quip, the more enemies one has the greater the honour. This describes Turkey's international standing these days perfectly, he said. From Syria and Iraq to Egypt and the countries of the Gulf — with the exception of Qatar — everyone is fed up with Erdogan and his attitudes towards the region. Will Erdogan take pride in the fact that he has generated such widespread dislike? Recent history can provide some pointers in answering this question. In 1954 Cairo expelled the Turkish ambassador Foad Hulusi Tugay following what it deemed his inappropriate criticism of the Free Officers. Tugay's wrath, said to have been expressed in crude terms, had little to do with his passion for democracy and much to do with the fact that his wife was related to the family of King Farouk. Ironically, this took place at the time when the Turkish government was headed by the Democratic Party (1950-1960), jointly led by Adnan Menderes and Celal Beyar. The AKP, headed by the Abdullah Gül-Erdogan duo, is a virtual replica of that conservative, Islamist-oriented party. Within a few years Egyptian-Turkish relations revived. In the late 1950s Gamal Abdel-Nasser received the Turkish Foreign Minister Fatin Rüsdü Zorlu who famously said, “Egypt and Turkey can do much in their respective regions.” The parallels are striking. Soon after Erdogan's cheerleaders vented their spleen President Abdullah Gül, speaking from another Black Sea town, described Turkey and Egypt as “two halves of an apple”. After Davutoglu calmed down he set off to Qatar on 23 November where he referred to Egypt and Turkey as “two great regional powers” and said that Egypt was the backbone of the Arab community and that the stability of the region was directly related to the stability of Egypt. The message was that Turkish-Egyptian friendship is a constant and recent developments no more than a temporary contretemps. Even Erdogan managed to temper his tone. While he restated what he described as his respect for the will of the Egyptian people as expressed through the polls (referring to the elections that brought Morsi to power), he added that he would respect the will of the Egyptian people in the future. In other words, he left the door open to the restoration of harmony between the two countries with the first elections in Egypt. Which brings me back to the question left pending. The answer is no, Erdogan is not a Mussolini.
