Egypt

Turkish President Abdullah Gül has congratulated Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on his election as president, in a first step of official communication between the two countries since the former general Sisi ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, Mohamed Morsi, last year.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was sworn in as president on June 8 following a landslide election almost a year after he deposed Egypt's first freely elected leader and crushed his Islamist supporters.

The retired field marshal took the oath of office at the heavily guarded Constitutional Court and then left to attend a reception with foreign dignitaries.

Istanbul’s Okmeydanı neighborhood has recently become synonymous for battles between police and leftists in contemporary Turkey, but it was once the favorite place for the Ottomans to practice their target skills Once upon a time many centuries ago, the hills and slopes of the area known today as Okmeydanı were covered in trees, bushes and meadows.

Egyptian prosecutors on Thursday demanded the "maximum" penalty, ranging from 15 to 25 years in jail, for all 20 defendants in the trial of Al-Jazeera journalists accused of aiding the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood.
      

The question is not whether the elections in Egypt and Syria are democratic or not. They are clearly not. But when did democracy visit these countries anyway? The closest Arab countries in the Middle East have come to democracy is in Iraq and that is only because the old mold was broken by the U.S. invasion.

BELGRADE - Ivan Mrkic, the foreign policy advisor to the Serbian president, on Wednesday met with a group of ambassadors of Arab states to discuss the upcoming donor conference for aid for Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The United States said on Wednesday it looked forward to working with former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as Egypt's president but expressed concerns about the "restrictive political environment" in which he was elected.
   

Former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was declared Egypt's president-elect June 3, winning 96.9 percent of the vote in an election nearly a year after he toppled president Mohamed Morsi, whose Islamist allies boycotted the polls.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said June 3 it had summoned the Turkish chargé d’affaires in Cairo to protest remarks made by Turkish officials regarding last week’s presidential polls.

This time a year ago, Turkey was experiencing its largest ever wave of civil protests, following the government’s strong reaction to protesters who did not want a shopping mall to be built over one of the last remaining green spots at the heart of Istanbul: Gezi Park in Taksim Square.