I hardly think Morsi has earned the right to be compared to Erdogan. Regardless, the people protesting against his undemocratic tendencies is one thing; the army committing a coup against him is quite another, and if you ask me worse than the evil it's supposed to correct.
Besides, you would think that the Egyptian secular elite had learned its lesson back in 1966 when they turned Sayyid Qutb into a martyr. Not that I think they'd be crazy enough to try and harm Morsi's person, but a coup to overthrow his government is close enough to martyrization. Now that the MB finally and openly led a major Arab government, it might finally have dawned on its supporters that for all the corruption and mess of Mobarak and other secular dictators, it wasn't the secularism that was the problem so much as the dictatorship, and that the MB did not in fact have all (or arguably any) of the answers. But no, they had to go and overthrow them again.
I'm no fan of the MB, but in most countries around the world, the United States included, it would be very hard to prevent religion from playing a strong role in politics. An openly confessional party is not necessarily a problem in itself, see Germany's CDU and the many similar parties in Europe. Of course the Egyptian MB is a far cry from that, but then it wasn't as if Egypt had much of a tradition of democracy to build on, and those things aren't created out of thin air.
I respectfully but very strongly disagree about Erdogan. His problem isn't Islam, it's his undemocratic strongman tendencies and the lack of people in his party who can put him in his place. The Turkey of the AKP as a whole and Erdogan in his moments when he has a tighter rein on his ego and temper both, however, are for the most part absolutely a part of the solution. An economically flourishing, politically confident Muslim nation that presents an example to the rest, that's pretty much exactly what the doctor ordered, although it's not Arab and as such doesn't have the same effect on the Arab nations that one might have hoped for.
The MB and Morsi are an entirely different story and I don't like them either, but I like military dictatorships still less, particularly in a region that has known very little else for decades and as such still is tempted to believe the old lie that "Islam is the solution". That sort of thing is handled by letting them try it out and fall flat on their face, not by making martyrs out of yet another generation of MB leaders.
Hence "letting them try it out and fall flat on their face" is how I would deal with the whole Mideast. In that sense I suppose this is a good thing because it does not have Western fingerprints on it. If even relatively modern Mideast states like Turkey (and, the Bosporus aside, it IS a Mideast state) can find no option but religious or military rule, I have little hope the rest of the region can any time soon, and as long as we continue practicing realpolitik there we will remain the convenient scapegoat for every real or imagined Mideast problem. After all, the Islamist battlecry has never been "down with the generals," but "down with the West;" the generals are only incidentally (and often fairly) targetted as corrupt quislings.
Last First in wotmania Chat
Slightly better than chocolate.
Love still can't be coerced.
Please Don't Eat the Newbies!
LoL. Be well, RAFOlk.
