The military coup in Egypt has divided the Middle East and North Africa while creating bizarre new bedfellows.
Supporting the coup are Syria as well as the conservative Gulf monarchies and pro-Western Jordan that have been preeminent in backing the anti-Syrian regime. Turkey and Tunisia have joined Iran in opposing it. While Israel, Libya, Yemen and Hamas in the Gaza Strip have withheld comment, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has praised the Egyptian army for its action. Algeria opted for a tightrope walk, urging Egyptians to reach consensus based on unity, national reconciliation and respect of the constitution and expressing hope that the approach would satisfy "the legitimate aspirations of the Egyptian people." Evidently, scars were left by the decade-long civil war that consumed nearly 200,000 Algerian lives after the military junta cancelled a second round of elections in 1991 when the Islamic Salvation Front was poised to win a two-thirds majority in the parliament.
Since December 2010 the region has been in the throes of turmoil variously called the Arab Spring, Arab Awakening or Arab Revolutions - focused on giving citizens the right to choose their governments freely. The common aim of this movement has been to end autocracies, be they secular nationalist or monarchical.
Though not an Arab country, Turkey took keen interest in the events unfolding in Arab North Africa. Turkey is a republic ruled under a series of secular constitutions since 1923, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an showcased its political system as ideal for the people struggling to overthrow secular dictatorships in North Africa. His tour of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia in September 2011 highlighted his ambition.
Two months later the emergence of the Islamist An Nahada , or the Renaissance, as the dominant party in the coalition government in Tunisia went down well with ErdoÄ?an, leader of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party. So too did the election of Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in June 2012. Morsi was one of the leading foreign guests at the Justice and Development Party's fourth congress in Ankara on 30 September.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, Turkey and Tunisia lost no time in lambasting the coup in Cairo. Alluding to Turkish military's seizures of power in 1960, 1971 and 1980, ErdoÄ?an warned that such takeovers extracted a heavy price. "Coups are evil," he said. "Coups target people, the future of democracy. I want this to be expressed by everyone with courage. I am surprised with the West. European Parliament disregarding its own values by not calling the military intervention in Egypt a coup."
Remarkably, the leader of Turkey's secular opposition Republican People's Party, Kemal KililçdaroÄ?lu, declared that "Military coups cannot be accepted." His group backed the all-party resolution in parliament condemning the military takeover in Egypt.
Equally remarkable were Tunisia's responses to the 3 July coup. The first top official to blast the Egyptian generals was President Moncef Marzouki, head of the secularist Congress for the Republic, who described the action as "a blow to democracy." Rashid Ghannouchi of Islamist party An Nahada followed his lead, slamming Morsi's ouster as "a flagrant coup against democratic legitimacy."
In contrast, within hours of Egypt's defense minister and army commander-in-chief General Abdel Fattah al Sisi naming the constitutional court chief Adli Mansour interim president, Saudi King Abdullah sent a congratulatory message. Rulers of the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Jordan rushed in the footsteps of the Saudi monarch.
So too, surprisingly, did Shaikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, freshly installed ruler of Qatar - under the guise of respecting "the wishes of the Egyptian people." His father, as well as the influential and Qatar-funded Al Jazeera TV, had backed the Muslim Brotherhood in the region to establish Qatar as a regional powerbroker rivaling Saudi Arabia.
The long simmering rivalry between tiny Qatar and the behemoth Saudi Kingdom solidified on their respective policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood was founded by schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928 with the aim of reconstructing Muslim societies in accordance with "the commandments of the Quran and its teachings." After Egypt's military ruler, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, outlawed the Brotherhood in 1954, one of its activists made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate him. The state repression that followed sent Brotherhood leaders into exile in Saudi Arabia. During the subsequent decades the Saudi kingdom became a haven for Brotherhood activists facing persecution in other Arab countries. These exiles played a crucial role in running Saudi educational institutions and the transnational organizations that Riyadh founded to counter Arab nationalist and leftist parties. During the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Saudi government used the Brotherhood's network to recruit non-Afghan Muslims to sign up as mujahedin, or holy warriors.
