Egyptians Divided Whether Coup Could Have Been Prevented

Marking 10th Anniversary of Revolution

CAIRO (Middle East Eye/Reuters) – On the 10th anniversary of Egypt’s coup, experts are split as to whether the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi was an inevitable outcome of tensions with the military, or if it could have been prevented.

On 3 July 2013, Egypt’s military led by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi removed Egypt’s president from power. The day marked the beginning of a purge of Muslim Brotherhood leaders that would morph into a wider crackdown on dissent targeting journalists, businesspeople and secular opponents of the military-led government.
The foremost cause of the collapse of Egypt’s transition was the military, Sharan Grewal, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of a forthcoming book on Arab militaries and the Arab Spring, said.
Grewal noted how Egypt’s military actively stoked popular concerns about Morsi’s tumultuous rule. Elected by narrow margins, the Muslim Brotherhood-backed leader was viewed with uncertainty by the country’s secular opposition, some businesspeople and many in Egypt’s sizable Christian minority.
The military has played a dominant role in Egypt since overthrowing the monarchy in 1952. Former presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak were all army men.
“The mere presence of a politicized military like Egypt’s made negotiations more difficult between the government and opposition,” Grewal said. “For the secularists, why work with Morsi when you can work with the military and kick him out?”
“In Egypt… this empowered military… ultimately terminated the transition,” he said.
But David Kirkpatrick, a journalist with the New Yorker who served as the New York Times’ Cairo bureau chief during the 2013 coup, challenged the notion that the transition’s fate was sealed.
“There was going to be conflict between the Egyptian military and a transition. How that conflict gets resolved… I hesitate to say is anything but inevitable,” he said at an event alongside Grewal hosted by the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) on Friday.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi paid tribute on Friday to the “sacrifices” and “patience” of Egyptians struggling with an economic crisis 10 years after he came to power.
“I believe that this generation who through their effort and patience transported Egypt from chaos and anxiety to stability and security is able to complete its development transformation,” he said, reading from prepared comments.
Sisi cited infrastructure and energy advancements as well as the establishment of new cities, one of his several cash-intensive initiatives.
Egypt faces an increasingly tough task raising cash for foreign debt repayments after external borrowing quadrupled over the past eight years to fund projects like a new capital, new high-speed rail, and a nuclear power plant.