The Egyptian parliament’s Arab Affairs committee has urged the Arab world to adopt a united stance against what it called aggressive Turkish policies, according to Gamal Essam el-Din writing in Egyptian paper Ahram .
“Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s criminal military adventures in Syria and Iraq represent a grave violation of international law and an aggression against the sovereignty of the lands of the two countries,” said the committee, which likened recent Turkish military activity along its southern borders to the First World War’s Armenian Genocide.
The committee also criticised the failure of the United States and Russia to respond more strongly to Turkey, suggesting this showed both countries had made secret deals with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan which involve turning a blind eye to what it said were war crimes.
Human rights groups and the United Nations were likewise targeted by the committee for failing to respond robustly enough to Turkish military operations in Syria and Iraq.
The statement concluded by expressing the hope that, “the friendly Turkish people will revolt against dictator Erdoğan, as well as the country’s corrupt political leadership, because they know that Erdoğan’s military adventures and follies will bring a lot of havoc to them and their lives in the long run.”
Relations between Egypt and Turkey have deteriorated since the violent overthrow and imprisonment of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in a 2013 coup, led by current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Morsi, and his now banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, have a similar ideological outlook to that of Erdoğan.