ANKARA
The Turkish minister in charge of affairs with the European Union (EU) has said a past buried by Turkey could not proposed as a future for Egypt.
EU Minister & Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis commented on Fouad Ajami's op-ed titled "What to Expect From the Muslim Brotherhood", published by The Wall Street Journal Online on June 26.
"It is preposterous that a past, which Turkey had buried, is proposed as a future for brotherly Egypt. A civilian government with a puppet image under the military's custodial rule is not the Turkish model. We utterly and categorically reject this slander," Bagis said, in response to Ajami's article.
"That political sham may have been an unfortunate imposition on Turkey but is now dead and buried. That model means corruption, political assassinations, death squads, political polarization, looted banks, 110% inflation and a closed economy based on pillaging. If these fiction writers need a 'model' for this sham, the correct term is not the Turkish, but the Baathist model. This is the model currently followed in Damascus," he said.
Bagis noted that the said model would not last long and certainly could not be imposed on Cairo.
Pointing to Turkey's democratization process in the past decade, Bagis also said that the country's pro-EU path was irreversible and the ultimate goal was to upgrade the Turkish nation and elevate political, economic and democratic standards to those of the EU.
"We cannot and will not condone any political system that falls short of addressing the full democratic aspirations of its people. This includes the brotherly Egyptian people and certainly the oppressed and proud Syrian people," Bagis stated.
