ANKARA
Turkish authorities strongly condemned Tuesday an Egyptian court’s decision to sentence to death Egypt’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood leaders and dozens of supporters.
“These decisions (constitute) the slaughter of justice, as well as of fundamental rights and freedoms,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday in a statement.
Erdogan said that the lifetime sentence decision against Morsi on a second case Tuesday also represents one of the “most obvious indicators that the coup administration tramples the law”.
He recalled that the same administration has killed thousands of innocent people and jailed tens of thousands since July 2013 when President Morsi was ousted by a military coup led by current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Erdogan urged the international community to “take action” in order “to put an end to this course that can seriously endanger social order in Egypt, and to revoke the death sentences given on the instructions of the coup administration”.
The Turkish president said that revoking the punishments is crucial to achieve “social reconciliation and restoration of stability in Egypt”.
He said that Turkey would always stand by the Egyptian people, and wishes to see common sense, democracy and rule of law prevail in Egypt.
Turkish Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek also condemned the death sentence and called on the Cairo administration to revoke it.
Cicek called on the international community to take action and condemn the court’s decision as necessitated by democracy, rule of law and human rights.
An Egyptian court on Tuesday sentenced former President Mohamed Morsi to death over jailbreak charges. The court also sentenced five leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, including top leader Mohamed Badie, to death on charges of taking part in a mass jailbreak in 2011.
Nearly 100 others were sentenced -- in absentia -- to the gallows, including prominent Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
The same court earlier on Tuesday sentenced Morsi and 16 co-defendants to life in prison over charges of conspiring with Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah to carry out “terrorist acts” in Egypt. The court also sentenced 16 defendants to death on similar charges.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, speaking to Anadolu Agency, also harshly condemned the death sentence ruling. “Hopefully, there will be a step back,” he said.
Cavusoglu spoke in South Arabia’s Jeddah city, where he participated at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s extraordinary meeting on Yemen.
The foreign minister said: “We are seeing practices that we have not seen up to the date by any coup administration.”
Separately, Turkish Culture Minister Omer Celik called on Egyptian administration to look back at the Turkey’s history and reconsider the decision.
“Those who made this decision, let them look at Turkish history. Those who handed the death sentence to the Turkish prime minister and cabinet members [in 1960s], are remembered with condemnation today.”
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party’s deputy chairman Yasin Aktay also condemned the death sentence against Morsi, calling it a “frantic” move made by the coup administration to legitimize itself.
Several Turkish civil society foundations, including IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, also slammed the sentences.
