Then,
Egypt declared its desire “to end [the] tension with Turkey.” This
reminded me of several other incidents that have soured Turkish-Egyptian
relations in the past, but I will mention only two.
One of them
dates to the aftermath of the Dress Code Reform in Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk's time. A law was passed in 1925 that banned the wearing of the
fez (tarboosh) and imposed the wearing of a Western-type hat instead for
civil servants. Foreign ambassadors were also affected by this law.
Abdel-Malek Hamza Bek, Egyptian ambassador to Ankara in the 1930s, was
forced to remove his tarboosh during an official reception held on the
ninth anniversary of the Turkish Republic, which was attended by
Atatürk.
Among several versions of the incident, one is as follows:
At the reception, Atatürk was nudging people next to him and staring
pointedly at the ambassador's tarboosh. Then he went and whispered
something to the Egyptian, after which the ambassador took off his
tarboosh, placed it on a tray and left the reception. Since the
ambassador was asked to remove his tarboosh by a person whose
suggestions could hardly be ignored, this incident was reflected in the
Western and Egyptian press as a scandalous humiliation of the Egyptian
ambassador, and the Al-Ahram newspaper urged the Egyptian government to
recall the ambassador in protest. But the Turkish foreign minister spoke
to Bek, apologizing for the incident, and subsequently the Egyptian
authorities sent a mildly worded protest and the incident was forgotten.
The
second incident dates back to Gamal Abdel Nasser's coup of 1952. The
Turkish ambassador to Cairo was then Ahmet Hulusi Tugay, a medical
doctor by profession. His wife, Emine Tugay, was a distant cousin of
overthrown King Farouk. The couple did not spare their criticism of
those who overthrew the king. The ambassador's wife used to invite
members of the so-called “free officers,” who carried out the coup, to
dinner and harshly criticize Nasser in their presence.
Ambassador
Tugay went one step further and conveyed these criticisms directly to
Nasser himself. Accounts vary of exactly how the incident took place.
According to one, Nasser came one evening to watch a performance at the
Cairo Opera House. When he entered the foyer, he noticed that a group of
foreign ambassadors were chatting in a corner. He waved, saying “Good
evening” to them. Ambassador Tugay stepped forward, beckoned to Nasser
and told him loudly that each of these ambassadors represented their
head of state, therefore he should not wave and say “Good evening” as if
he were greeting his friends.
Nasser maintained his composure but
instructed his subordinates to “expel the ambassador this evening from
Egypt.” The Egyptian authorities contacted Lt. Col. Sıtkı Ulay, the
military attaché of the Turkish Embassy, who had been a good friend of
the “free officers” since the beginning of their plot against the king.
(Eight years later, Ulay became an important member of the so-called
National Unity Committee [Milli Birlik Komitesi], which carried out the
1960 military coup in Turkey.) The Egyptian authorities informed Ulay
that Tugay had left the Opera House for an important mission abroad and
that the family should not worry about the trip.
The Turkish
ambassador was accompanied to the airport, searched in a humiliating
manner and sent back to Turkey the morning after the incident (though
other sources say that he left for Turkey several days later).
In
1952, the cause of the incident was a criticism directed at the military
coup which overthrew the legitimate king, and it took decades to mend
bilateral relations.
Last week, the cause was a criticism directed at
a military coup that overthrew a legitimate government. It is difficult
to say how long it will take to mend relations this time, or how
hundreds of Turkish companies operating in Egypt will be treated in the
meantime. |
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