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[مستر محمد سلام]

Hundreds Die as Egyptian Forces Attack Islamist Protesters

A young man next to the bodies of protesters killed on Wednesday. Many of the dead were shot in the head or chest; some appeared to be in their early teens


CAIRO — Egyptian security officers stormed two encampments packed with supporters of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, on Wednesday in a scorched-earth assault that killed hundreds, set off a violent backlash across Egypt and underscored the new government’s determination to crush the Islamists who dominated two years of free elections

The attack, the third mass killing of Islamist demonstrators since the military ousted Mr. Morsi six weeks ago, followed a series of government threats. But the scale — lasting more than 12 hours, with armored vehicles, bulldozers, tear gas, birdshot, live ammunition and snipers — and the ferocity far exceeded the Interior Ministry’s promises of a gradual and measured dispersal.
At least one protester was incinerated in his tent. Many others were shot in the head or chest, including some who appeared to be in their early teens, including the 17-year-old daughter of a prominent Islamist leader, Mohamed el-Beltagy. At a makeshift morgue in one field hospital on Wednesday morning, the number of bodies grew to 12 from 3 in the space of 15 minutes.
“Martyrs, this way,” a medic called out to direct the men bringing new stretchers; the hems of women’s abayas were stained from the pools of blood covering the floor.
Adli Mansour, the figurehead president appointed by Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, declared a state of emergency, removing any limits on police action and returning Egypt to the state of virtual martial law that prevailed for three decades under President Hosni Mubarak. The government imposed a 7 p.m. curfew in most of the country, closed the banks and shut down all north-south train service.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the main Islamist group behind Mr. Morsi, reiterated its rejection of violence but called on Egyptians across the country to rise up in protest, and its supporters marched toward the camps to battle the police with rocks and firebombs.
Clashes and gunfire broke out even in well-heeled precincts of the capital far from the protest camps, leaving anxious residents huddled in their homes and the streets all but emptied of life. Angry Islamists attacked at least a dozen police stations around the country, according to the state news media, killing more than 40 police officers.
And they lashed out at Christians, attacking or burning seven churches, according to the interior minister. Coptic Christian and human rights groups said the number was far higher.
The *****down followed six weeks of attempts by Western diplomats to broker a political resolution that might persuade the Islamists to abandon their protests and rejoin a renewed democratic process despite the military’s removal of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president. But the brutality of the attack seemed to extinguish any such hopes.
The Health Ministry said that 235 civilians had been killed and more than a thousand others had been wounded across Egypt. But the rate of dead and seriously injured people moving through the field hospitals at the sit-ins seemed to promise the true numbers would be much higher.
The assault prompted the resignation of the interim vice president, Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Prize-winning former diplomat who had lent his reputation to selling the West on the democratic goals of the military takeover.
“We have reached a state of harder polarization and more dangerous division, with the social fabric in danger of tearing, because violence only begets violence,” Mr. ElBaradei wrote in a public letter to the president. “The beneficiaries of what happened today are the preachers of violence and terrorism, the most extremist groups,” he said, “and you will remember what I am telling you.”
The violence was almost universally criticized by Western governments. A spokesman for President Obama said the United States was continuing to review the $1.5 billion in aid it gives Egypt annually, most of which goes to the military. The spokesman, Josh Earnest, said the violence “runs directly counter to pledges from the interim government to pursue reconciliation” with the Islamists.

[مستر محمد سلام]

Is This the End of the Arab Spring?

Introduction

Ahmed Gomaa/Associated PressAuthorities cleared sit-ins in Cairo, killing scores of protesters.

With a state of emergency declared in Egypt, continued unrest in Bahrain, democracy under threat in Tunisia, Libya, and possibly even Turkey, and an all-out civil war in Syria, is there any hope left for the anti-authoritarian movement that swept through the Middle East?

• Airing Out the House of Egypt
• 
  
  Mona Eltahawy, columnist
• If the West Would Step Up
• 
  
  Ed Husain, Council on Foreign Relations
• Activists Must Reclaim a Co-Opted Movement
• 
  
  Karima Bennoune, author, “Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here”
• In the Gulf, a New Model for Creating Democracy
• 
  
  Matar Ebrahim, activist
• In Turkey, Voters Still Have Power
• 
  
  Christine Ogan, Indiana University
• Region’s Hardliners Will Take Heart
• 
  
  Haleh Esfandiari, Woodrow Wilson International Center
• ‘Spring’ Uprisings Are Nothing New
• 
  
  James L. Gelvin, author, "The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know"
• There’s Hope in the Long Run
• 
  
  Michael Albertus, University of Chicago and Victor Menaldo, University of Washington
• 
• Consider Egypt’s Peaceful Masses
  
  Tawakkol Karman, human rights activist, Yemen
• Democracy May Succeed if Violence Doesn’t Rise
• 
  
  Peter Ackerman, International Center for Nonviolent Conflict
• 

[مستر محمد سلام]

http://www.thanwya.com/vb/showthread...77#post5439777

[مستر محمد سلام]

Turning against Turkey

The Turkish government is behaving very oddly these days. As if there were not sufficient issues to concern it at home and immediately across the Turkish border in Syria, the situation in Egypt now tops the agenda in Ankara. Not long ago, only occasional statements on Egypt came out of the offices of the Turkish president and prime minister. These days, the attention is constant.

Moreover, in Turkey where the government goes the media follows. This has increased its coverage of Egypt, most of it being lifted directly from Al-

Jazeera and CNN, in addition to from reports on the summoning of the Egyptian ambassador to Turkey, Abdel-Rahman Salah, for an interview at the Turkish foreign office. It is difficult to find opinions not in harmony with the position of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), while anti-Egyptian fervour is being drummed up in the streets of Istanbul and Ankara.

These are filled with government-organised marches condemning the “coup” in Egypt and calling for the restoration of “legitimacy”, in other words the reinstatement of the ousted former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.

As a result, the Egyptian people have begun to air their anger at Ankara, having already begun to question Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s democratic credentials when he unleashed a police *****down against peaceful environmental rights protesters in Istanbul’s Gezi Park earlier this year.

However, they could never have imagined that Erdogan would be arrogant enough to cast himself as an Ottoman caliph wearing a Western suit and tie. But Erdogan has set his government and its media squarely against the will of the Egyptian people, as voiced in the revolutionary waves of the 30 June Revolution, and this has opened their eyes to the true character of the government in Ankara.

The admiration that many Egyptians felt for the beautiful expanses of Anatolia and the elegance of its cities until just a month and a half ago has now turned into something akin to revulsion. The anger has homed in on a single person, Erdogan, but it has also been expressed by the Egyptian public’s switching off the Turkish television ******s that it was once addicted to and increasingly boycotting products made in Turkey.

Turkish companies probably understand that such things are the closest at hand, which is why they have been treating the phenomenon like a passing storm, after which the bonds of affection will return to normal. Two weeks ago, in a meeting specially convened in response to the situation in Egypt, Turkish Economy Minister Zafer Çaglayan reassured Turkish businessmen that their interests in Egypt were safe at least for the foreseeable future.

The tone was subdued and the desire to avert alarm clear, but there has nevertheless been no ignoring the fact that relations between Cairo and Ankara are now in crisis and that Ankara has done its best to inflame it.

For the time being, Egypt’s response has been to withdraw the Egyptian ambassador from Ankara. It is difficult to say whether it will go so far as to sever relations with Turkey, a painful decision that the interim government may feel forced to make in the light of the campaign being waged by the powers-that-be in Ankara against a government that they describe as “dictatorial” and other forms of reckless behaviour that Egyptians regard as unwarranted interference in their country’s domestic affairs.

Many Turks living in Egypt have commented on the huge gulf between what they see on the ground in Egypt and the remarks made by their country’s officials and the coverage of Egypt by the Turkish media. Where are the massacres that Ankara keeps talking about, they ask. Why does the Turkish media never say a word about the crimes committed by the other side?

Since the media airs nothing but images of violence accompanied by one-sided commentary against the brutal “dictatorship” in Egypt and its ruthless army and police, Turkish residents of Egypt are apt to receive phone calls from alarmed friends and relatives back home. Their advice is not to pay too much attention to the media coverage in Turkey, but they still want to know why Erdogan is orchestrating the current campaign against Egypt and what purposes it is meant to serve.

It is unlikely that the Turks will ever receive clear answers to these questions, at least not while Erdogan is prime minister and continues to control the country’s press. He made the Egyptian crisis the centrepiece of a speech delivered yesterday in Bursa south of the Marmara Sea, as usual lacing his words with religious terms and formulas guaranteed to stir up the emotions of his supporters.

These had received instructions from AKP municipal chiefs a week beforehand to take part in the rally and to bring Turkish flags, AKP banners and pictures of Erdogan with them. With such a well-primed audience, Erdogan was sure to raise a cheer when he raised four fingers, instead of the usual two.

These four fingers are understood to signal Rabaa Al-Adaweya, in Turkey the symbol of the opposition to the “anti-Morsi coup”.