Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “cannot differentiate between a popular revolution and a military coup,” Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said in a statement released on Thursday.
Abou Zeid’s remarks come after Erdogan slammed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, calling him a “military coup man” during an interview with Al-Jazeera on Tuesday. Erdogan went on to say that “Sisi has nothing to do with democracy, and that he’s killed thousands of his own people.”
Egypt’s foreign ministry retorted by saying that the Turkish president “keeps confusing matter and is losing the ability to make sound judgments” and that this reflects “the difficult circumstances the Turkish president has been through.
“He cannot differentiate between an evident revolution where more than 30 million Egyptian people demanded the support of the Egyptian military and between military coups as we know them,” the press release went on to say.
Egyptian-Turkish diplomatic affairs have faced tension ever since the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi, which Turkey views as a coup and a move against “the Egyptian people’s will.”
However, there was speculation that the two countries would reconcile when Erdogan restored ties with Russia and Israel but Turkey stopped short of extending its diplomatic blitz to Egypt.
A senior Turkish official later said that a Turkish delegation would head to Egypt to restore diplomatic relations but these claims failed to materialize.
Last week, Egypt’s Parliamentary Speaker Ali Abdel Aal stated that Egypt is open to cooperation with Turkey, given the latter does not interfere with Egypt’s domestic affairs, state-owned Al-Ahram reported.
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