Authoritarian Upgrading: The Dynamics of Exile Politics and Transnational Repression

Dr. Mohammad Affan

Abstract

Exodus of thousands of the Egyptian politicians, activists, human rights defenders, and scholars in the wake of the 2013 military coup has created new dynamics in the contentious politics of Egypt.

On the one hand, the political exiles found themselves trapped in a new reality; they were supposed to pursue their struggle while they were yet to settle in their host countries, growingly disconnected from their comrades at home, and progressively run out of resources.

Nevertheless, they worked hard to capitalize on the opportunities they had: the luxury of freedom to pursue their activism and the political and financial support they enjoyed from their host governments as well as national diasporas.

On the other hand, the Egyptian regime developed its repressive tools to rise up against the threats imposed by the political exiles. It managed to upgrade its abilities to censor its opponents abroad, restrict their mobility, chase them by the Interpol abuse, and intimidate them by proxy coercive measures.

Drawing on the literature of exile politics and resurgent authoritarianism in the post-Arab Spring MENA region, this paper aims to examine the evolving transnational repressive capacities of the Egyptian regime post-2013.

Focusing on the Egyptian exiles in Turkey, this research will follow qualitative research methods, mainly document analysis and in-depth interviews. It, concludingly, will highlight how the current Egyptian exile activism impacted the nature of regime authoritarianism as well as the opposition’s strategies and experience.

Key words:

Authoritarian Upgrading; Exile Politics; Transnational Repression; Egyptian Exile; Arab Spring Diaspora.

Biography

Dr. Muhammed Affan is the director of Al Sharq Academia and a lecturer of Political Science at Ibn Haldun University, Türkiye. A medical doctor by training, he holds a PhD in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter and an MA degree in Comparative Politics from the American University in Cairo. He is the author of Secularism Confronts Islamism: Divergent Paths of Transitional Negotiations in Egypt and Tunisia. His research interests include Islamism and democratization in the MENA region.

التصاعد السلطوي: ديناميات سياسات المنفى والقمع العابر للحدود في مصر ما بعد 2013

الملخص

أدى نزوح الآلاف من السياسيين والناشطين السياسيين والمدافعين عن حقوق الإنسان والأكاديميين المصريين في أعقاب الانقلاب العسكري عام 2013 إلى خلق ديناميكيات جديدة في السياسة الصراعية في مصر. فمن ناحية، وجد المنفيون السياسيون أنفسهم محاصرين في واقع جديد؛ إذ من المفترض أن يواصلوا نضالهم من الخارج بينما لم يستقروا بعد في البلدان المضيفة لهم، كما أنهم ينفصلون بشكل متزايد عن رفاقهم في الوطن، ويعانون من استنفاد الموارد بشكل تدريجي. ومع ذلك، فقد عملوا بجد للاستفادة من الفرص المتاحة لهم في موقعهم الجديد: إمكانية متابعة نشاطهم السياسي بحرية أكبر من نظرائهم في مصر، والدعم السياسي والمالي الذي تمتعوا به من الحكومات المضيفة وكذلك من مواطنين المصريين في المهجر.

ومن ناحيته، فقد طور النظام المصري أدواته القمعية للوقوف في وجه التهديدات التي يفرضها نشاط المنفيين السياسيين في الخارج، وتمكن من رفع قدراته على القمع العابر للحدود، وفرض رقابة على معارضيه، وتقييد حركتهم، ومطاردتهم من خلال البوليس الدولي، وترهيبهم من خلال الإجراءات القسرية عن بعد.

انطلاقا من الأدبيات الأكاديمية المتعلقة بسياسات المنفى والاستبداد في منطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا ما بعد الربيع العربي، تهدف هذه الورقة إلى دراسة القدرات القمعية العابرة للحدود للنظام المصري بعد عام 2013، وبالتركيز على المنفيين المصريين في تركيا، سيتبع هذا البحث أدوات البحث النوعية، وخاصة تحليل الوثائق والمقابلات الشخصية المتعمقة. وفي الختام، سوف يتم تسلط الضوء على كيف أثر النشاط السياسي في المنفى على طبيعة استبداد النظام المصري، وكذلك على استراتيجيات المعارضة وخبراتها.

الكلمات المفتاحية:

التصاعد السلطوي؛ سياسة المنفى؛ القمع العابر للحدود؛ المنفى المصري؛ الربيع العربي في المهجر.

التعريف بالباحث

الدكتور محمد عفان هو مدير الشرق أكاديميا ومحاضر العلوم السياسية في جامعة ابن خلدون، بتركيا، حصل على درجة الدكتوراه في سياسة الشرق الأوسط من جامعة إكستر، ببريطانيا، ودرجة الماجستير في السياسة المقارنة من الجامعة الأمريكية في القاهرة. وهو مؤلف كتاب “العلمانية تواجه الإسلاموية: مسارات متباينة للمفاوضات الانتقالية في مصر وتونس”، تشمل اهتماماته البحثية الإسلاموية والديمقراطية في منطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا.

Interdiction:

In the aftermath of the military coup of 2013, an unprecedented wave of political expatriation largely reshaped the dynamics of Egyptian politics. For the first time in Egypt’s modern history, thousands of political activists, academicians, human rights defenders, journalists, and university students fled the country to escape prosecutions and repression. As the regime’s coercive measures went beyond Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters to target liberal and leftist dissidents as well, growing opposition communities started to form in many countries abroad such as Qatar, Türkiye, and UK.[1]

Increasingly infuriated by the opposition activities in exile, the Egyptian regime developed new measures to face this mounting challenge. On the one hand, the regime harassed the exiled opponents either by making raids on their homes, confiscating their properties, arresting members of their families, and denying them the right to renew their passports and to other governmental services.[2]  On the other hand, the regime increasingly strengthens its ties with the Egyptian diasporas and the hosting governments to counterweight the dissident exiles and put more pressure on them.[3]

Drawing on the literature of exile politics and resurgent authoritarianism in the post-Arab Spring MENA region, this paper aims to examine the evolving transnational repressive capacities of the Egyptian regime after the coup of 2013. Focusing on the Egyptian exiles in Türkiye, this research will follow qualitative research methods, mainly document analysis and in-depth interviews. Concludingly, it will highlight how the current Egyptian exile activism impacted the nature of regime authoritarianism as well as the opposition’s strategies and experience.

Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

Two main concepts are of great utility to describe the autocratic regimes transformation in the post-Arab Spring MENA region: authoritarian learning and upgrading. Authoritarian learning is defined as “a process in which authoritarian regimes adopt survival strategies based upon the prior successes and failures of other governments”.[4] It is a process whereby the authoritarian regimes continuously develop their repressive abilities. Hence, authoritarian learning is usually combined with an upgrading, which “involves reconfiguring authoritarian governance to accommodate and manage changing political, economic, and social conditions”.[5]

In many respects, the autocratic regimes in the region have upgraded their repressive tools based on what they have learned from the Arab Uprisings experience and to meet the new political challenges they are facing. They seek “continuity- through- change” by increasing the efficiency and the reach of their authoritarian governance.^[6]

Bank et al. described four prominent features in the resurgent authoritarianism in the post-2011 Arab world: rise of the personalistic rule, intensification of state repression, ideological indoctrination of compliance, and trans-nationalization of political order.[7] What concerns this research most is the transnational dimension which, according to them, includes “autocracy promotion and sponsorship, alongside diffusion and learning, [that] have given regimes additional resources to maintain their power”.[8]

Extra-territorial repression is one of the key manifestations of authoritarian trans-nationalization. In Freedom House report “Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach: The Global Scale and Scope of Transnational Repression”, Nate Schenkkan and Isabel Linzer denote that transnational repression is applied to the cases when “governments reach across national borders to silence dissent among their diaspora and exile communities”.[9] According to them, the risk of transnational repression is growing globally in the recent years owing to many factors:

• The advancements in communication technologies that enable authoritarian regimes to spy on their exiled opponents, monitor their social media accounts, and intimidate them digitally.
• The increasingly securitized global environment under the influence of the rising crises of illegal immigration and transnational terrorism.
• The global decline in liberal values after the recession of the third wave of democratization that coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union.[10]

The following table summarizes the methods of transnational repression that commonly utilized by the autocratic regimes:[11]

Domestic acts of retaliation are other examples that could be added to “Threats from a distance” such as confiscation or destruction of personal properties, arbitrary dismissal from an employment, cancellation of academic degrees, up to stripping of citizenship.[12]

Apart from the oppressive measures, autocratic regimes might also deploy containment measures for both the exile dissidents as well as the national diaspora in the host countries.[13] Sometimes, they open doors for exiled figures to return home as a bid to weaken the opponents’ organizations and reduce their hostile activities abroad. Also, national diasporas are usually a prime target of competition between the autocratic governments and their exiled oppositions. For the latter, whose reach to their fellows in the homeland is risky and difficult, diaspora communities are regarded as a “valuable source of legitimacy” as well as financial and human resources. Therefore, autocrats are usually keen to increase their connections with their national expatriates to earn their loyalty and support. They even might establish a special committee or a coordination agency to maintain their relations with these communities and mobilize them against the exiled dissidents.[14]

In the other vein, political exiles can be defined as those who are opposing their home regimes from abroad. Although the term diaspora might refer to the exiles, what distinguishes the latter is their “struggle to facilitate the conditions for their return [and] their determination not to establish life abroad as a comfortable option, even temporarily.[15] Also, political exiles should be differentiated from ordinary exiles or the political refugees (i.e., those who left their homeland for political reasons). According to Yossi Shain, “[n]o exiles should be regarded as political unless they participate in exile politics”.[16]

Shain describes exile political activism as “political activity directed against the policies of a home regime, against the home regime itself, or against the political system as a whole, so as to create circumstances favorable to their return”.[17] Accordingly, exile politics range from activism that aims only at policy reform and acknowledge the legitimacy of the home regime and generally accept the established political and social order to the revolutionary or military actions that seek to overthrow the home regime and replace the entire political and social order.

Political exiles typically voiced their discontent either horizontally to their national diasporas in order to gain their support and loyalty and to mobilize them against their home regimes; or vertically by addressing the policymakers and powerholders in the host-countries to urge them to put pressure on or even directly intervene to remove the government in their countries. Therefore, their activism includes a wide range of actions such as public protests, social media campaigns, funding in-home opposition activities, establishing media projects, challenging the regime’s monopoly over information, and lobbying foreign governments and international organizations.[18]

However, political exiles are usually faced with many challenges that hamper their activism. Besides the measures of transnational repression, being in exile put many strains on the opposition abroad. As Dana M. Moss mentioned, “[b]y breaking up dissident networks and separating leaders from their adherents, exit acts as a safety valve for regimes by releasing pressure from below”.[19] Also, exiled opponents are easily portrayed by their home regimes as disloyal to their countries and agents for foreign powers. They even might become delegitimized in the eyes of their fellow opponents at home because they are away from their day-to-day struggle.[20] Furthermore, exile political activism is very often paralyzed by divisions either due to ideological, tactical, and personal disputes, or the struggle over the scares resources, or because of “conflict transmission”, which means persistence of in-home political conflicts and identity-based divisions in the exile communities.[21]

Within the aforementioned conceptual and theoretical frameworks, this research will examine the exile activism practiced by the Egyptian opponents in Türkiye on the one hand and the oppressive, as well as the containment, strategies adopted by the Egyptian regime to neutralize the threat posed by them on the other hand. Out of that, the manifestations of authoritarian upgrading will be highlighted to shed light on the new dynamics of contentious politics emerged in Egypt after the coup of 2013.

The Egyptian Exiles in Türkiye

In general, Egypt has witnessed two concomitant and overlapping waves of political exodus after the military coup that took place in July 2013: the first – and by far the larger wave – was the exodus of Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters that started immediately in the wake of the coup. Thousands of Islamist activists and many of the group leaders had to flee the country either to escape prosecutions or to be able to pursue their struggle against the military junta from abroad. A few months later, when the campaign of repression expanded to target liberal and leftist opponents as well, another wave of political exodus started in 2014 and on.[22]

For Islamist exiles, Türkiye was a convenient option. The then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a fierce critic of the military coup and a vocal supporter of the ousted President Mohammed Morsi.[23] Furthermore, the ruling AK party and its conservative base were very sympathetic to the Islamist cause in Egypt especially after the bloody dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in, whose four-fingered yellow symbol was invented by Turkish supporters before becoming a global symbol.[24] As a result, the Egyptian community in Türkiye rapidly increased to become 25,800 in 2016 according to an official Egyptian report. Then, it reached its peak in 2019 to become 31.105 according to the Turkish government.[25]

Felt protected and supported by the host government, the exiled opposition in Türkiye, mainly the Islamist faction, was highly engaged in anti-regime activities. Four main patterns of activism are worth mentioning in this regard:

• The establishment of anti-coup political entities: From 2013 and on, Egyptian opponents abroad founded many fronts and movements to organize their political activities; however, most of these entities were short-lived and proved dysfunctional. As an example, three attempts at making alliances between the Egyptian politicians and activists from all ideological spectra took place: The Revolutionary Council that was declared in Istanbul in August 2014, the Egyptian National Front that was established in 2017, and the Egyptian National Alliance declared in January 2021. Apart from these fronts, Muslim Brotherhood founded an Istanbul-based Crisis Management Office Abroad between 2014 – 2016 to provide support to the group’s struggle against the military coup. Later, when the Egyptian regime efficiently eliminated all opposition in home and ended all domestic manifestations of dissent around 2016, the group as a whole reorganized itself abroad and Türkiye was a key host state.[26]
• The establishment of media outlets: A more efficient tool deployed by the Egyptian opposition in Türkiye was the establishment of TV stations addressing the Egyptian people and harshly criticizing the regime. Arguably some of these stations, such as Mekamelin (Persisting), Alsharq (Orient), and Watan (Homeland), enjoyed some popularity in Egypt to the extent that President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi had to publicly threaten them many times and to warn Egyptians from their subversive messages.[27]
• Human Rights advocacy: Plenty of human rights advocates, were forced to leave Egypt after the military coup. Empowered by their previous experience and connections with international organizations, those exiled activists pursued the work of their organizations abroad or established new organizations. They waged many campaigns against human rights violations in Egypt. As an example, a number of lawyers representing Muslim Brotherhood approached the International Criminal Court in 2014 requesting an investigation of the crimes against humanity committed in Egypt. Also, in 2020, the Initiative for Freedom, a US-based advocacy organization established by a former detainee Mohamed Sultan, filed a case against the Egyptian officials involved in the infamous Rabaa incident. Although most of those defenders resided in USA and Europe, human rights defenders with Islamist background are actively working from Türkiye through many organizations such as Justice for Human Rights.[28]
• Academic activities: Many exiled Egyptian academicians decided to challenge the Egyptian regime’s control over knowledge production. Either by joining already established research centers and think tanks or by founding new ones, those academicians extensively publish reports, papers, and articles, and actively participate in conferences and forums. Through these activities, they propose their own views on the Egyptian affairs and criticize the political and economic policies of the government. In Türkiye, many think tanks were established by scholars as well as politicians, most notably the Egyptian Institute for Political and Strategic Studies founded by the ex-minister and a Brotherhood leader Amr Darag, and Hürriyet Center for Political and Strategic Studies founded by the Islamic Group leader and the previous chairman of the Building and Development party Tarek Al Zumar. However, the majority of these institutions are currently suffering from scarce resources and their research works are usually discredited for being biased and opinionated.[29]

Over the decade, though, the opposition activism in Türkiye has changed both qualitatively and quantitatively. As for the intensity and the efficiency of the anti-regime activities, the Egyptian exiles’ abilities progressively deteriorated over time with two remarkable shifting points: in early 2016, when the internal disputes paralyzed the Muslim Brotherhood – the largest, the most organized, and the most resourceful faction in the opposition, and in early 2021, when the rapprochement talks started between the representatives of the Turkish and the Egyptian regimes.

Qualitatively, the Egyptian exiles’ agenda also has been modified over time. It becomes less political and more human rights-centric. In other words, the Egyptian dissidents stopped challenging the regime’s legitimacy and focused more on the violations committed against the political prisoners. Also, the opposition’s TV stations have become their “spearhead” against the regime due to the incompetency of all political initiatives formed abroad.^[30]

The Egyptian Regime’s Arsenal Against the Exiles in Türkiye

Based on the list of transnational repression methods categorized before, the Egyptian regime deploys almost all measures to neutralize the threats of the opposition abroad. As one of the political exiles stated:

The regime used all methods of intimidation and retaliation against me: I was fired from my job arbitrarily in 2015; my name was put on the terrorist list and my properties were confiscated by a court verdict; I received countless threatening messages to be deported and executed or to harm my kids and family; I’m a constant target of defaming black campaigns in pro-regime social media pages and TV stations; suspicious links are sent to my email and cellphone all the time. Moreover, the security forces raided my home in Egypt many times, and once, they destructed the furniture and madly shot bullets within the empty home. All these measures definitely affected my mental and psychological status and put me under continuous stress.^[31]

Abusing the government’s authority over the official documents is a common practice deployed against the political exiles in Türkiye. After 2013 coup, the Egyptians living in Türkiye are stigmatized as opponents, therefore, unusual security measures are taken against them by the consulate of Egypt in Istanbul and the access to its services has become increasingly difficult. As an example, the process to renew the passports becomes too complicated and lengthy in comparison to other Egyptian consulates abroad. Also, the consulate officials routinely do security checks for any citizen applying for consular services, and, in many cases, they refuse to give them the documents they applied for. Deprived from their official IDs, many Egyptian dissidents become unable to have a legal residence or travel or receive medical services in Türkiye.^[32]

The prominent opposition figure, Ayman Nour, is one of those who suffered this act of retaliation. The Egyptian Embassy in Türkiye as well as in Lebanon refused to renew his passport – the decision that was supported by the Supreme Administrative Court in June 2020 and justified by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry based on his hostility against Egypt and his endeavors to mobilize the countries against his homeland.[33]

The Egyptian authorities do not only hinder the mobility of their opponents, but they also prevent their families from visiting them. They either stop the exiles’ relatives at the airport and ask them to return home or sometimes confiscate their passports too.^[34] Also, it is reported that the Egyptian consulate refused to issue birth certificates for the political exiles’ kids who were born in Türkiye, leaving them without any official IDs.^[35]

The retaliation from the exiles’ families reached its climax by frequently raiding their homes and arresting some of them ‘as hostages’ to force their relatives to stop their activism. The families of many TV presenters in the opposition stations as well as human rights and political activists in Türkiye were victims to this abuse such as the families of Moataz Matar, Hisham Abdullah and his wife Ghada Naguib, Mohammed Naser, and Hamza Zobaa.^[36] The psychiatrist Dr. Amr Abu Khalil is a notable case too. According to his brother Haitham, the human rights activist and TV presenter in Türkiye, he was arrested in 2019 in order to keep his brother silent. A year later, Dr Abu Khalil passed away due to fatal medical negligence in jail.[37]

From the other side, bureaucratic institutions in Egypt also become very reluctant to respond to or to communicate with their Turkish counterparts to verify academic or work certificates submitted by the Egyptian citizens in Türkiye. As a result, many of the exiles become unable to pursue their study or fulfill job requirements.^[38] More alarmingly, in a serious escalation against its exiled opponents, the Egyptian government in 2020 decided to withdraw the citizenship of a political exile in Türkiye, Ghada Naguib, based on a law enacted in 2017, which gives the government the right to strip the citizenship of whoever joins a group or an entity that threatens the state’s general order.[39]

Digital harassment with all its forms is another widely used practice by the Egyptian regime against the exiles in Türkiye. This includes waging defaming campaigns on social media that promote fake news and fabricated videos and images and spread humiliating hashtags targeting key opposition figures. Also, it is reported many times that the Egyptian activists received suspicious links on their emails and cellphones or warning messages that there is an attempt to access their accounts from governmental source.^[40]

Another form of digital harassment is by continuously reporting the opponents’ personal accounts and media outlet pages on social media as a pretext to put restrictions on their reach or to close these pages completely. This tool is very efficient given that the regional headquarters of many social media companies are in the Gulf countries, whose governments are supportive to the Egyptian regime and that Egypt is known to be one of the biggest social media manipulators in terms of fake accounts and bots.^[41]

Legally, the Egyptian government exerted noticeable efforts in chasing the exiled opponents and make pressure on the host countries by the Interpol abuse. Türkiye, despite its outright objection to the 2013 coup, was not an exception. The TV presenter Hisham Abdullah was detained for a while in Türkiye based on a red notice issued by Interpol in December 2018. A month later, a member of Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Abdul Hafiz, was deported from a Turkish airport to Egypt based on the same allegations. However, this was not a coordinated transfer, according to the Turkish authorities, which opened an investigation and suspended a number of officers involved in this deportation.[42]

An Egyptian exile, who used to live in Türkiye between 2013 and 2018, was another case of the Interpol abuse. He mentioned that while he was travelling from Atatürk Airport, he was suddenly stopped and investigated by the Airport police based on an Interpol red notice. In the beginning, he thought that this notice will not be taken seriously by the Turkish authority, who supposedly knew that the court verdict against him is politicized and lack fair legal procedures. But, to his surprise, he was given a no-return exit stamp on his passport. Later on, he found his name on the Türkiye’s travel ban list. Consequently, he had to file asylum application in another country and, for four years now, he refrains from travelling outside this country.^[43]

The pressure on the political exiles in Türkiye further increased after the normalization talks between the Turkish and the Egyptian regimes that started in 2021. Many factors brought both countries closer after years of hostility and rivalries such as their intersecting interests in Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean and the need to strengthen their strained economies. Slowly but steadily, trust building measures were taken by both governments, starting with mutual visits of the foreign ministers, then, a handshake between the Turkish President and his Egyptian counterpart in Doha during the opening ceremony of the 2022 World Cup, to culminate with the restoration of their full diplomatic relations by dispatching the ambassadors in July 2023.[44]

Naturally, this reproachment had a negative impact on the Egyptian opponents in Türkiye. In the beginning, Turkish authorities gave instructions to the opposition’s TV stations to soften their criticism tone against the Egyptian regime. Later, they demanded certain programs on these stations to stop, forcing their presenters to leave Türkiye. Under these pressures, Mekamelin Channel shut down its Turkish office in April 2022.[45] Also, Turkish authorities started to censor some opponents’ social media accounts and occasionally ask them to remove the contents that are hostile to the Egyptian regime. Furthermore, according to some sources, the applications of a number of political exiles for the Turkish citizenship were put on hold owing to objections from the Egyptian side.^[46]

Apart from these retaliation and oppressive measures, the Egyptian regime was also keen to adopt containment measures to the diaspora communities. In the constitution of 2014, an article was dedicated to the rights and duties of the Egyptians living abroad. This was translated into the resumption of the Ministry of Immigration and Egyptian Expatriates Affairs in September 2015, which was assigned the task of integrating the Egyptian diasporas in the “Egypt Vision 2030”. Consequently, the official activities report published in 2021 demonstrates a surge in the number of engagement initiatives carried out by the Ministry in cooperation with the Egyptian embassies.[47]

Even for the opposition abroad, the regime started to develop a strategy of containment after its call for a national dialogue in April 2022. Many prominent figures close to the regime such as Amr Adeeb, the well-known TV presenter, and Diaa Rashwan, the general coordinator of the national dialogue, sent reassuring messages about the possibility of a safe return for certain politicians and activists. Later, in September 2022, the head of Reform and Development Party, Mohamed Anwar Sadat, who is also known to be close to the authorities, put forward an initiative entitled “A Safe Return” for the political, human rights and media activists, who were not involved in any violent activities or convicted by a court. As a result, a limited number of politicians and activists decided to return back to Egypt such as Wael Ghonim, Amr Hamzawy, and Mamdouh Hamza.[48]

Nevertheless, as an exiled activist noticed, in contrast to many Egyptian consulates abroad which heavily engaged in the regime’s ambitious plans, the consulate in Istanbul did not organize any public events or gatherings to communicate with the Egyptian diaspora in Türkiye. As for reaching out to the political exiles, “it seems that the Egyptian regime is not keen to follow a containment strategy with the opponents in Türkiye”, he added. According to him, up until now, there is no serious effort to communicate with the political exiles nor strengthening ties with the Egyptian diaspora in Türkiye.^[49] Over a decade, only sporadic cases of Egyptian opponents in Türkiye returned home – with or without prior arrangements with the Egyptian authority. For instance, the famous journalist Gamal Al-Gamal, who returned voluntarily back to Egypt in February 2021, was arrested on his arrival and went through investigations for months before being released.[50]

Conclusion

Exodus of thousands of the Egyptian politicians, activists, human rights defenders, and scholars in the wake of the 2013 military coup has created new dynamics in the contentious politics of Egypt. On the one hand, the political exiles found themselves trapped in a new reality; they were supposed to pursue their struggle while they were yet to settle in their host countries, growingly disconnected from their comrades at home, and progressively run out of resources. Nevertheless, they worked hard to capitalize on the opportunities they had: the luxury of freedom to pursue their activism and the political and financial support they enjoyed from their host governments as well as national diasporas.

On the other hand, the Egyptian regime developed its repressive tools to rise up against the threats imposed by the political exiles. It managed to upgrade its abilities to censor its opponents abroad, restrict their mobility, chase them by the Interpol abuse, and intimidate them by proxy coercive measures. This upgrading was partly thanks to the backing the regime had from other autocratic regimes. For example, digital censorship and harassment, according to many experts, were a clear case of authoritarian learning, where the Egyptian regime was able to benefit a lot from the advanced technologies and experiences of China, Israel, KSA, and UAE.^[51]

Although the political exiles are currently suffering a clear setback as they are growingly losing the support of the host governments and as the Egyptian regime is efficiently deploying the measures of transnational repression, this new dynamic arguably will continue to shape Egyptian politics for a while. As long as the regime is neither tolerating the opposition at home nor attempting to find a way-out for thousands of the exiled opponents, the latter, with their accumulated experience, might continue to be a source of annoyance and hostility for a while.

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[1] Mohamed Mandour, “A Homeland Lives Within Us, But We Cannot Live in It: Egyptian Organizing and Activism from Exile”, Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, 23 Mar 2022 https://timep.org/commentary/analysis/a-homeland-lives-within-us-but-we-cannot-live-in-it-egyptian-organizing-and-activism-from-exile/  (accessed on 7 Dec 2023).

[2] Egypt 2022 Human Rights Report, U.S. Embassy in Egypt, 12 Apr 2023https://eg.usembassy.gov/egypt-2021-human-rights-report/ (accessed on 7 Dec 2023).

[3] Michael Barak, “The Egyptian Diaspora and El-Sisi’s Use of Soft Power”, The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, Jun 2022 https://jstribune.com/barak-the-egyptian-diaspora/ (accessed on 7 Dec 2023).

[4] Stephen G. F. Hall and Thomas Ambrosio, “Authoritarian learning: a conceptual overview”, East European Politics, (2017) 33,2, p. 143.

[5] Steven Heydemann, “Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World”, The Saban Center at The Brookings Institution, Analysis Paper (2007) 13, p. 1.

[6] André Bank, Eva Bellin, Michael Herb, Lisa Wedeen, Sean Yom, and Saloua Zerhouni, “Authoritarianism Reconfigured: Evolving Forms of Political Control” in The Political Science of the Middle East. Eds. Marc Lynch, Jillian Schwedler, and Sean Yom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), p. 53.

[7] Ibid., p. 53.

[8] Ibid., p. 55.

[9] Nate Schenkkan and Isabel Linzer, “Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach: The Global Scale and Scope of Transnational Repression”, Freedom House, Feb 2021, p. 1.

[10] Ibid., p. 6.

[11] Ibid., p. 9.

[12] Yossi Shain, The Frontiers of Loyalty: Political Exiles in the Age of the Nation-State (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), p. 147.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid., Pp. 50-54.

[15] Shain, The Frontiers of Loyalty, xix; Dana M. Moss, The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism against Authoritarian Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), p. 3.

[16] Shain, The Frontiers of Loyalty, P. 14.

[17] Ibid., p. 15.

[18] Moss, The Arab Spring Abroad, p. 33.

[19] Ibid., p. 3.

[20] Shain, The Frontiers of Loyalty, p. 31.

[21] Shain, The Frontiers of Loyalty, p. 153; Moss, The Arab Spring Abroad, p. 23.

[22] Michele Dunne and Amr Hamzawy, “Egypt’s Political Exiles: Going Anywhere but Home”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Mar 2019, p. 1.

[23] Ibid., 6.

[24] “How Rabaa and its symbol changed Turkish-Egyptian relations”, Middle East Eye, 14 Aug 2022 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/rabaa-turkey-egypt-symbol-relations-changed (accessed on 7 Dec 2023).

[25] Gerasimos Tsourapas, “Egypt: Migration and Diaspora Politics in an Emerging Transit Country”, Migration Policy Institute, 8 Aug 2018 https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/egypt-migration-and-diaspora-politics-emerging-transit-country (accessed on 7 Dec 2023); “Türkiye’de en fazla hangi ülke vatandaşı var? TÜİK nüfus verileri açıkladı”, Sözcü, 5 Şubat 2021 https://www.sozcu.com.tr/2021/gundem/turkiyede-en-fazla-hangi-ulke-vatandasi-var-tuik-nufus-verileri-acikladi-6244807/ (accessed on 7 Dec 2023).

[26] Dunne and Hamzawy, “Egypt’s Political Exiles”, p.10.

محمد عفان، “قوى ثورة يناير في عشر سنوات: الفرص المهدرة والخبرات المستفادة”، الشرق للأبحاث الاستراتيجية، يناير 2021، ص: 10-11.

[27] Mandour, “A Homeland Lives Within Us, But We Cannot Live in It”, The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

عفان، “قوى ثورة يناير في عشر سنوات: الفرص المهدرة والخبرات المستفادة”،ص: 11.

[28] Dunne and Hamzawy, “Egypt’s Political Exiles: Going Anywhere but Home”, p. 8; Mandour, “A Homeland Lives Within Us, But We Cannot Live in It”, The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

[29] Ibid.

^[30] Interview with a political activist, Istanbul, 20 Sep 2022; Zoom interview with a TV presenter at one of the opposition’s stations, 22 Sep 2022.

^[31] Zoom interview with a TV presenter at one of the opposition’s stations, 22 Sep 2022.

^[32] An interview with a political activist, Istanbul, 20 Sep 2022; Egypt 2022 Human Rights Report, U.S. Embassy in Egypt.

[33] Egypt 2022 Human Rights Report, U.S. Embassy in Egypt.

“مصر.. المحكمة الإدارية العليا تقضي برفض تجديد جواز سفر أيمن نور”، RT عربي، 6 يونيو 2020  https://bit.ly/3CpAPPN (تم التصفح 11 ديسمبر 2023).

^[34] Interview with a political activist, Istanbul, 20 Sep 2022.

^[35] Interview with a human rights activist, Istanbul, 15 Oct 2022.

^[36] Ibid.

[37] “وفاة عمرو أبو خليل في السجن بمصر “بعد مشادة كلامية”.. شقيقه يتهم ومصدر أمني يوضح”، CNNعربي، 8 سبتمبر 2020 https://arabic.cnn.com/middle-east/article/2020/09/08/egypt-prisinor-amr-abukhalil-death-reactions (تم التصفح 11 ديسمبر 2023).

^[38] Interview with a political activist, Istanbul, 20 Sep 2022.

[39] أحمد رمضان، ” النظام المصري يلاحق معارضيه … سحب الجنسية من الناشطة غادة نجيب”، الجزيرة نت، 24 ديسمبر 2020،  https://bit.ly/3eupcPG (تم التصفح 11 ديسمبر 2023).

^[40] Interview with a political activist, Istanbul, 20 Sep 2022; Interview with a human rights activist, Istanbul, 15 Oct 2022.

The author himself, who moved to Türkiye in early 2015, received notifications on his mobile phone that referred to his location as Police Station of Sharm El Sheikh many times around 2018.

^[41] Zoom interview with a TV presenter at one of the opposition’s stations, 22 Sep 2022; Interview with a human rights activist, Istanbul, 15 Oct 2022.

Tamara Kharroub, “Mapping Digital Authoritarianism in the Arab World”, Arab Center Washington DC, 3 Feb 2022 https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/mapping-digital-authoritarianism-in-the-arab-world/ (accessed on 11 Dec 2023).

[42] Schenkkan and Linzer, “Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach”, p. 51.

^[43] Zoom interview with a TV presenter at one of the opposition’s stations, 22 Sep 2022.

[44] Burak Elmali, “The tantalizing reconciliation between Türkiye and Egypt”, Anadolu Agency, 3 May 2023 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/analysis/opinion-the-tantalizing-reconciliation-between-turkiye-and-egypt/2888186 (accessed on 11 Dec 2023); The Official Account of the Turkish Foreign Ministry on Twitter, https://twitter.com/MFATurkiyeAR/status/1676159435490701314/photo/1 (accessed on 11 Dec 2023).

[45] “Egypt: Opposition channel to leave Turkey amid Cairo-Ankara rapprochement”, Middle East Eye, 30 Apr 2022 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/egypt-turkey-rapprochement-opposition-channel-stops-broadcasting (accessed on 11 Dec 2023).

^[46] Interview with a political activist, Istanbul, 20 Sep 2022; Interview with a human rights activist, Istanbul, 15 Oct 2022.

BBC عربي، “وجدي غنيم .. تركيا ترفض منح جنسيتها للداعية المصري”، 2 يونيو 2023 https://www.bbc.com/arabic/tv-and-radio-65793564 (تم التصفح 11 ديسمبر 2023).

[47] Barak, “The Egyptian Diaspora and El-Sisi’s Use of ‘Soft Power’”.

[48] إبراهيم الخازن، “عودة حمزاوي وغنيم إلى مصر.. هل من مزيد؟”، وكالة الأناضول، 19 سبتمبر 2022 www.t.ly/v94XV  (تم التصفح 11 ديسمبر 2023).

^[49] Interview with a political activist, Istanbul, 20 Sep 2022.

[50] أحمد رمضان، “بعد اعتقال جمال الجمل.. مصريون يسخرون من دعوة السلطة للمعارضة من الداخل”، الجزيرة نت، 28 فبراير 2021 www.t.ly/GdrV  (تم التصفح 11 ديسمبر 2023).

^[51] Kharroub, “Mapping Digital Authoritarianism in the Arab World”; Zoom interview with a TV presenter at one of the opposition’s stations, 22 Sep 2022.