Don’t say we didn’t warn you repeatedly about Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his administration:
Now he’s at it again, blaming Israel and a French Jewish philosopher for Egypt’s troubles, via WaPo:
Turkey’s prime minister on Tuesday accused Israel of being behind the ouster of Egypt’s Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, offering as the only evidence for his claim a statement by a Jewish French intellectual during a meeting with an Israeli official.In the nationally televised speech, Recep Tayyip Erdogan also took a swipe at Muslim nations, accusing them of betraying Egypt by supporting the country’s military-backed new leaders.The evidence Erdogan gave for the alleged Israeli involvement was a meeting in France before elections in Egypt in 2011 between an Israeli justice minister and an unnamed intellectual whom he quoted as saying the Muslim Brotherhood would not be in power even if it wins elections.“What is said about Egypt? That democracy is not the ballot box. Who is behind this? Israel is. We have the evidence in our hands,” Erdogan said in a televised address to officials from his Islamic-rooted, ruling party. “That’s exactly what happened.”An aide later told The Associated Press that the evidence Erdogan was referring to was a video “available on the Internet” of a press conference by Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and French philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Levy.
This appears to be the video to which Erdogan was referring, just posted to YouTube by someone who obviously agrees with Erdogan:
Interview with Tzipi Livni earlier foreign minister and french writer Bernard-Henri Levy at 2 June 2011.No need for comments about whos behind what.
Who knew that a French Jewish philosopher held such sway over the Egyptian military and tens of millions of Egyptians who took to the streets against Morsi.
The full 1.5 hour discussion is here, and was a wide-ranging discussion about the future of democracy in the Middle East, very little of which concerned Egypt (the excerpt above starts here).
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY