ABSTRACT
On July 15, 2016, the world was taken aback by the news that a faction within the Turkish armed forces had carried out a military coup to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to the Turkish authorities, post-coup investigations disclosed connections between the putschists and the Gulen movement, a suspicious group designated as a terrorist organization in 2014 by Turkey, despite sharing some Islamic norms with President Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party. Scholars are now struggling with many questions relating to comparison of the Egyptian and the Turkish cases. Turkey is another Middle Eastern country with a long history of a politically active military that has always perceived itself as the guardian of the secular system proclaimed by Atatürk and as responsible for dealing with internal as well as external threats. The common denominator between the Egyptian and the Turkish cases is the traditional involvement of their militaries in politics.
