It is a sad thing for an academic to have to explain the difference between a revolution and a coup d'état to other academics, especially those who have described the Egyptian military coup against its elected president on July 3, 2013 as a revolution. Understandably, participants in the June 30 demonstrations are keen to call their achievement a revolution. It is difficult, however, to understand how academics have abandoned their scientific task and objectivity in an effort to prove that when a military leader in uniform declares the overthrow of an elected president, it is actually a revolution. However, if an academic states that this coup is to be applauded, it might be understandable, even though, on principle, any coup is bad. To prove the opposite is the job of those who make such a claim. Equally, a coup that occurs in a state still in the process of sowing the first seeds of democracy is tantamount to uprooting the seedlings and flattening the soil once again. No worse damage than this could be done in the world of politics, as it is commonly understood.
We thus find ourselves obliged to explain the difference between a revolution and a coup, between the events of January 25, 2011 and those of July 3, 2013. The first fundamental difference is that we are dealing, in the former, with a president who was not elected in free and fair elections and was without legitimacy in a modern political system; in the latter, we have a president who was elected in free and fair elections, even if by a margin of only a single vote. It is astounding that some claim electoral legitimacy is not enough. In all modern democratic systems, the people cannot withdraw legitimacy from a president immediately after his election. This is the case even if some believe that his policies will cause long-term damage to the economy or even threaten national security. Any passing familiarity with the criticisms of US Democrats against the policies of George Bush Jr., or those of Republicans against the policies of Barack Obama, and the fact that both finished their terms, should be enough to settle the issue. The same point is demonstrated by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's insistence on going to war in Iraq alongside the US in 2003 despite overwhelming popular opposition and resistance on the part of many of his ministers. Additionally, in his first year in office, the popularity of current French President François Hollande is lower than that of any previous president of France. Even so, there have been no demonstrations in France calling for his removal, nor has the opposition invited the army to intervene. In Egypt, setting a precedent to abide by democratic rules by respecting the people's first electoral choice, however painful that choice might be, and by respecting the first peaceful democratic transition from this choice of presidents to the next, is the overriding priority.
The Egyptian popular revolution in 2011 was against an undoubtedly corrupt, oppressive, and failed regime after 30 years of rule. The Egyptian people had no doubts over the prospect of power being passed down from Mubarak the father to Mubarak the son-a man with dubious links to big business and clear intentions to maintain the police state. In 2013, however, an elected president was removed from office only one year after his election. Even if there is substance to the accusations against him of failing as a leader (or falling victim to a scheme to make him fail) or of acting deviously or lying (both of which are "permissible" practices in the world of politics given the general adversity it involves), there is no substance to charges against the deposed Egyptian president of corruption or any criminal acts, such as murder, illegal detention, or torture. As for the charge of remaking the state in the image of the Brotherhood, it cannot really be taken seriously. It is difficult to believe that a president lacking real authority over the army, police, judiciary (meaning its willingness to cooperate with him), or media, in addition to a corrupt bureaucracy, could change the identity of these bodies in any radical way in four, or even ten, years.
Furthermore, the number of protestors might have been greater in 2013 than in 2011, but the divisions evident in 2013 cannot be compared with the exemplary unity of 2011. In the January 25 Revolution, protestors represented all sectors of the Egyptian population, with the demonstrations in support of the regime numbering a few hundred, or a few thousand at best. In fact, the moment the head of the regime stepped down in, the demonstrations in support of him disappeared without a trace. Since June 30, 2013, however, division today has been so marked that it is impossible to speak about the stance of the Egyptian people as a whole;[1] opposite the reaction to Mubarak's overthrow, the sit-ins and protests in support of the kidnapped president of 2013 have continued until the time of publication and do not seem likely to end soon.
In addition, in 2011 the head of the regime stepped down after realizing that it would be impossible to carry on in the face of a popular will that had paralyzed the state's vital services. In 2013, the elected president was abducted by the leaders of the military coup only a few days after protests began. In 2011, there was no alternative for administering the state other than the armed forces, given the absence of legitimately elected institutions.[2] In 2013, however, a representative assembly existed that had been legitimately elected according to the rules of modern democracy, though this assembly was dissolved, and legislative authority was passed to an appointed president, thereby adding legislative authority to his executive authority-which he does not really possess.
In 2011, the Egyptian people had no need to prove to the world that there had been a revolution, nor any need to analyze the number of demonstrators to convince the world of that fact. In 2013, the world's states are divided between those that reject the coup (e.g., African states, Turkey and Tunisia) and those that are hemming and hawing (e.g., the US and EU states). Clearly, the complex political calculations of this second group of states concerning a central player like Egypt prevent an outright condemnation of the coup.
Moreover, international press reports reveal that the vast majority of academics, intellectuals, and journalists around the world treat the recent events in Egypt as a military coup that has aborted the country's first democratic experiment. After the revolution of January 25, 2011 succeeded, the people as a whole, with very few exceptions, were proud of their achievement. They had high hopes for a bright future after a long period of stagnation. The events of July 2013, on the other hand, have left the people depressed and divided. They have lost faith in democracy, or at least have become distrustful of it. They have lost hope for a country in which generations to come could live with the knowledge that they are the ultimate decision makers, and that the army is vigilant in defense of the territory, unwilling to exploit the people's divisions to oust an elected president and appoint another in his place.
What has happened recently in Egypt is a fully-fledged military coup-it could even serve as the ideal coup. The elements of the coup were complete when the appointed commander of the army, in full military uniform, read out the coup communiqué and ousted his elected president-the man who had appointed him-handing authority that was not his to an unelected replacement. He did this in the presence of certain civilian leaders, not one of whom had been elected. Claiming that the Egyptian minister of defense has not carried out a coup because he has not himself assumed power is like claiming that a state under military occupation is free merely because one of its citizens has been appointed president by the occupier.
After having established that the recent events in Egypt constitute a coup, we are left with the claim that the coup was a "coup to be applauded." In reality, a coup cannot be applauded, by definition. There is no better proof of this fact than the zeal of the coup's perpetrators and supporters to market what happened as a revolution and not a coup. A military coup is the worst thing that can happen to a state. It is a death blow to the legal state, turning it into a failed state, officially and practically. All future elections lose their credibility. Any future president becomes a servant of the army rather than its commander. A military coup turns the state into a military state, whether directly in practice or indirectly and implicitly. In Egypt, the coup has taken the country into a dark tunnel with no apparent hope at its end for the creation of a modern, democratic state where power rotates peacefully and the military does not govern civilians. The future looks bleak for the creation of a state responsible for a people bound together in a strong social fabric despite their differences, able, despite different trends among them, to work together to achieve the interests of the nation. Even though this would most likely not have come about under Muslim Brotherhood rule, populations learn from their democratic experiences and wrong choices. They learn nothing from military coups.
Finally, since a military coup is the worst thing that could happen to a country, encouraging and supporting a military coup is the gravest mistake in politics. In democracies, political and party battles may go so far as physical violence between political opponents. However, they never go as far-not even implicitly-as turning to the military for help, even if such a move has strong popular backing. The mere act of giving legitimacy, even if popular, to military intervention in political life means that popular sovereignty itself has become a joke and emptied of value, since afterwards the people will be unable to ensure that the military will not intervene in their democratic choices. Similarly, no future president can be confident that he will not be betrayed by the leadership of his army if one day his opponents are able to mobilize a part of the people against him. It will not be long before those who welcomed the coup realize that they have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.
As I finish writing this commentary, I am watching the leader of the Egyptian coup himself, and not his appointed president or prime minister, call upon the people to demonstrate in order to give him the authority to start a civil war. Is this call from the leader of the coup not enough to prove that the events in Egypt were nothing but a military coup?
This article was translated by the ACRPS Translation and English Editing Department. The original Arabic version can be found here.
[1] It would be pointless to respond to the claim that there were 30 million protestors; that figure is one of the foundational myths of the coup led by army generals and their civilian assistants. The fact that this is only a myth has been proven in the reports of the numbers of demonstrators based on the area of the streets and squares where they were protesting.
[2] The rigging of the parliamentary elections in 2010 was one of the main reasons for the revolution.
