BURSA, Turkey
Egypt is repeating a disdainful period of history that Turkey itself witnessed 55 years ago, when coup plotters executed an elected leader, Turkish premier said Saturday.
Addressing an election rally in the western Bursa province, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said: "A disdainful, painful period that happened in Turkey 55 years ago is now being repeated in Egypt."
Davutoglu was referring to Turkey's 1960 military coup that saw the then Turkish premier, Adnan Menderes, executed.
Menderes was first jailed and then made to stand on trial before being executed along with two ministers, Hasan Polatkan and Fatin Rustu Zorlu, following the 1960 coup.
Davutoglu pledged that no president or prime minister would ever again be sent to the gallows in Turkey.
He also slammed a headline about the Morsi story posted on the Dogan Media Group's news website that allegedly said: "Mursi, president with 52 percent votes, sentenced to death."
The premier asked the meaning of choosing such a headline. "What do they mean? If they mean [to refer to] our President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who became president with his 52 percent votes, then they should know that no president or prime minister will be sent to gallows again in these soils," Davutoglu said.
He pledged to protect democracy under any circumstances.
Later, Davutoglu told a Turkish network Saturday that Egypt could not go back to its pre-revolution era.
"No matter how much they want to revive the [Hosni] Mubarak era, it is impossible to go back now," he said, adding: "It is also impossible to make chaos and crisis sustainable."
He accused those who “broke the back of the democracy in Egypt” of being responsible of all sectarian clashes that had now appeared in the Middle East.
"The democracy trend was replaced by sectarian clashes and efforts [were made] to return to old regimes after the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013," the premier said.
"In Yemen, Houthis, Shias and Sunnis fought together for democracy; in Egypt, Muslims and Christians did also and in Libya, it was the same also."
"But the wind suddenly changed after ousting of Morsi," he noted.
Turkey's former Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag also condemned the Morsi verdict, saying: "Bosses of the court that sentenced Morsi to death want just puppet governments like Sisi [the current Egyptian president]."
Turkey's Culture Minister Omer Celik also called on the international community to unite against "terrorism" of the coup government in Egypt. "The international community should make the government withdraw its ruling," Celik said.
The remarks came after an Egyptian court Saturday referred 122 out of 166 defendants, including Morsi to the country's grand mufti to consider possible death sentences against them over charges of jailbreak and espionage charges.
Morsi's family did not attend Saturday's trial session, citing "their rejection of the legitimacy of the trial."
He is the first president to be referred to the country’s grand mufti in Egypt's history. The opinion of the mufti is non-binding, but Egyptian law makes it necessary for judges to seek a religious point of view on any death sentence.
Last month, Morsi and 12 codefendants were sentenced to 20 years in prison each for allegedly mobilizing supporters to “intimidate, detain and torture” dozens of anti-Morsi protesters during clashes outside eastern Cairo's Ittihadiya presidential palace in December 2012.
Morsi currently faces multiple criminal trials on charges that include espionage and “insulting the judiciary,” charges he says are politically motivated.
Since Morsi's ouster, Egyptian security forces have launched a relentless crackdown on dissent that has targeted both Islamists and secularists, leaving hundreds dead and thousands behind bars.
