Citing a report from Youm7, Haaretz is reporting that the reason Huseyin Avni Botsali – Turkey’s Ambassador to Egypt – was expelled on November 23rd had to do with an active relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. The source of Botsali’s funding should also raise eyebrows.

Via Haaretz:

Turkish ambassador in Cairo reportedly aided the Muslim Brotherhood and carried out plans to divide Egypt using funding from countries such as the United States, Britain, France and Germany, sources have told Egyptian newspaper Alyoum Alsabea.

Alyoum Alsabea, known for its opposition to the Brotherhood, cited high-ranking, unnamed sources. The plan allegedly was to support the Brotherhood, sow chaos in Egypt and prove that the army was not in control after the toppling of President Mohammed Morsi over the summer.

Of course, when this news is viewed in the context of an unconfirmed report from earlier this month – via Egyoffline – that Russia has come into possession of a classified U.S. document, some interesting consistencies seem to take shape. That document allegedly claims that the objective of the United States Obama administration after Mursi’s ouster was to… sow chaos and pit Egyptians against Egyptians in a civil war.

Erdogan: Emotional about Muslim Brotherhood losing in Egypt.

Back to Haaretz:

According to Alyoum Alsabea’s website, the ambassador was expelled for his involvement in espionage, incitement and work against Egypt’s national security, particularly over the past three months after Muslim Brotherhood activists and supporters were removed from city squares.

According to the report, the Turkish ambassador sheltered prominent Muslim Brotherhood activists inside the embassy, transferred money to support the group’s armed cells training in the Sinai and Gaza Strip, and provided logistical and strategic support. The paper said Turkish intelligence was sending arms to Islamist militias by sea to El Arish in Sinai and Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

According to the sources, Egyptian intelligence agents listened in on conversations between the Turkish ambassador and the ambassadors of the United States, Britain, France and Germany to move the plan forward.

Seeming to further corroborate these claims is an article by Hurriyet Daily News back on July 26th. In it, Botsali was accused of:

…acting as a courier for senior brotherhood members and of transporting their money outside the country by taking advantage of his diplomatic immunity.

In developments since Botsali’s expulsion, Turkey seems to be playing a game of good cop / bad cop with Egypt. Assuming the role of rational mediator is President Abdullah Gul with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan taking the position of belligerent tough guy (though he comes by that naturally; he can’t help himself).

Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul is a Gulenist.

Via Ahram Online:

Egyptian authorities conveyed their desire for crisis containment to Turkish President Abdullah Gul, who also reassured senior officials in Cairo of Turkey’s commitment to non-interference, according to a highly informed official source Monday.

“The role Turkish President Abdullah Gul is playing in helping cement Turkish-Egyptian relations is instrumental, and is highly appreciated in Cairo. However, we have to be clear that we are deeply dismayed at the position of the Turkish Prime Minister [Recep Tayyep Erdogan], which we told the President,” said the official source.

This is clearly a high stakes game of diplomacy and political gamesmanship but it should not be missed on anyone that Gul is a follower of the incredibly deceptive Fethullah Gulen, a wealthy Turkish Islamic scholar currently residing in the United States.

Gulen: He’s emotional.

Gulen fled to the U.S. in 1998. He says it was for medical care (notably in a pre-Obamacare age) but odds are quite good that he did so in order to seek refuge from a then secularist Turkish government that was hot on his trail. In 2009, Gulen’s sermons were aired on Turkish television. It’s believed that these sermons contributed to the indictments against him. We’ve posted them before but here is an excerpt from one of those sermons, via Middle East Quarterly:

You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it … You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence … trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here.

There is no doubt that Egypt is familiar with Gulen and knows that Gul is one of his followers. Any concessions toward Egypt in response to Gul’s diplomatic overtures will no doubt be political calculations. Nonetheless, it is important that people who are rooting for Egypt to defeat the Brotherhood do not succumb to the deception of a Gulenist named Gul.