2012 Egyptian presidential election in the context of "2013 Egyptian coup d'état"

Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi (born 19 November 1954) is an Egyptian politician and retired military officer who has been serving as the sixth and current president of Egypt since 2014.

After the 2011 Egyptian revolution and 2012 election of Mohamed Morsi to the Egyptian presidency, the first democratic election in the history of the country, Sisi was appointed Minister of Defense and Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces in August 2012, replacing Hussein Tantawi. Following large scale protests against Morsi's presidency, Sisi led the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état, overthrowing Morsi on 3 July 2013. Demonstrations and sit-ins organized by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian democracy followed.

The Egyptian Crisis (Arabic: الأزمة المصرية, romanized: al-ʿazma al-Maṣriyya) was a period that started with the Egyptian revolution of 2011 and ended with the beginning of the presidency of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in 2014. It was a tumultuous three years of political and social unrest, characterized by mass protests, a series of popular elections, deadly clashes, and military reinforcement. The events have had a lasting effect on the country's current course, its political system and its society.

In 2011, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets in an ideologically and socially diverse mass protest movement that ultimately ousted longtime president Hosni Mubarak. A protracted political crisis ensued, with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces taking control of the country until the 2012 presidential election brought Mohamed Morsi, the former Muslim Brotherhood leader, into power as the first democratically elected president of Egypt. However, ongoing disputes between the Muslim Brotherhood and secularists led to anti-government protests and ultimately culminated in the 3 July 2013 coup d'état against Morsi, led by chief General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The military move deepened the political schism and led to a crackdown by security forces, resulting in the killing of over a thousand of Morsi's supporters. In 2014, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi eventually won the presidential election in a landslide victory, criticized by international observers as lacking democratic standards.

The Arab Spring (Arabic: الربيع العربي, romanized: ar-rabīʻ al-ʻarabī) was a series of pro-democracy anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response to the death of Mohamed Bouazizi by self-immolation. From Tunisia, the protests initially spread to five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. Rulers were deposed: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, all in 2011; and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen in 2012. Omar al-Bashir of Sudan was deposed in 2019 after a coup d'état caused by a revolution. Bashar al-Assad of Syria was deposed in December 2024 after 13 years of civil war. Major uprisings and social violence occurred, including riots, civil wars, or insurgencies. Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Sudan. Minor protests took place in Djibouti, Mauritania, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the Western Sahara. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world is ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām! (Arabic: الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام, lit. 'the people want to bring down the regime').

The wave of initial revolutions and protests faded by mid to late 2012, as many Arab Spring demonstrations were met with violent responses from authorities, pro-government militias, counterdemonstrators, and militaries. These attacks were answered with violence from protesters in some cases. Multiple large-scale conflicts followed: the Syrian civil war; the rise of ISIS, insurgency in Iraq and the following civil war; the Egyptian Crisis, election and removal from office of Mohamed Morsi, and subsequent unrest and insurgency; the Libyan Crisis; and the Yemeni crisis and subsequent civil war. Regimes that lacked major oil wealth and hereditary succession arrangements were more likely to undergo regime change.

Mohamed Mohamed Morsi Eissa Al-Ayyat (/ˈmɔːrsi/; Arabic: محمد محمد مرسي عيسى العياط, romanized: Muḥammad Muḥammad Mursī ʻĪsá alʻAyāṭ, IPA: [mæˈħæmmæd ˈmoɾsi ˈʕiːsæ (ʔe)l.ʕɑjˈjɑːtˤ]; 8 August 1951 – 17 June 2019) was an Egyptian politician, engineer, and professor who was the fifth president of Egypt from 2012 to 2013, when General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi removed him from office in a coup d'état after protests in June. Affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood organization, Morsi led the Freedom and Justice Party from 2011 to 2012.

Morsi was born in El Adwah, Sharqia Governorate, before studying metallurgical engineering at Cairo University and then materials science at the University of Southern California. He became an associate professor at California State University, Northridge, from 1982 to 1985 before returning to Egypt to teach at Zagazig University. Associating with the Muslim Brotherhood, which was then barred from office under President Hosni Mubarak, Morsi stood as an independent candidate for the 2000 parliamentary election. Following the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, which resulted in Mubarak's resignation, Morsi came to the forefront as head of the Freedom and Justice Party. It became the largest party in the 2011–12 parliamentary election and Morsi was elected president in the 2012 presidential election. On 30 June 2012, the SCAF handed the authority to Morsi, ending 6 decades of military rule.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (Arabic: جماعة الإخوان المسلمين jamāʿat al-ʾiḫwān/al-ikhwan/el-ekhwan al-muslimīn, IPA: [elʔexˈwæːn]) is a Sunni Islamist religious, political, and social movement, with adherents estimated to number between 2 and 2.5 million. Founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928, the group spread to other Muslim countries but has its largest organization in Egypt, despite government crackdowns in 1948, 1954, 1965, 1979, 1981 and 2013, after plots, or alleged plots, of assassination and overthrow were uncovered.

Following the 2011 Egyptian revolution, it launched a political party—the Freedom and Justice Party—to contest elections, which it described as having "the same mission and goals, but different roles" than the Brotherhood, and agreeing to honor all Egypt's international agreements. The party won 42% of the seats in the 2011–12 parliamentary elections, and its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, the June 2012 presidential election. Morsi was overthrown after mass protests within a year, and a crackdown ensued that some have called more damaging to the movement than any "in eight decades". Hundreds of members were killed and imprisoned, including Morsi and most of the Brotherhood's leadership. Among the general Egyptian population, a "huge hostility" was felt towards the MB. In September 2013, an Egyptian court banned the Brotherhood and its associations, and ordered that its assets be seized; and in December the military-backed interim government declared the movement a terrorist group following the bombing of security directorate building in Mansoura. The Brotherhood denied being responsible for the attack and Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, an al-Qaeda-linked group, claimed responsibility. They also issued a statement condemning violence.

Hamdeen Sabahi (Arabic: حمدين صباحي, romanized: Ḥamdīn Ṣabāḥī, IPA: [ħæmˈdeːn sˤɑˈbɑːħi]; born 5 July 1954) is an Egyptian politician and journalist. He is a former presidential candidate and currently the leader of the Egyptian Popular Current and a co-leader of the National Salvation Front.

An opposition activist during the Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak eras, Sabahi was jailed 17 times during their presidencies for political dissidence. He was an immediate supporter and participant of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Sabahi entered the 2012 Egyptian presidential race in which he finished third place with 21.5% of the vote trailing the second place candidate Ahmed Shafiq by a margin of 700,000 votes.

The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP; Arabic: حزب الحرية والعدالة, romanized: Ḥizb al-Ḥurriyyah wa-l-ʿAdālah) is an Egyptian Islamist political party. The ex-president of the party, Mohamed Morsi, won the 2012 presidential election, and in the 2011 parliamentary election it won more seats than any other party. It is nominally independent, but has strong links to the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, the largest political group in Egypt. The party was banned and dissolved in 2014; however, it continues to function underground.

The 2011–12 Egyptian parliamentary election resulted in the FJP winning 47.2 percent of all seats in the country's lower house of parliament, with fellow Islamist parties al Nour and al Wasat winning 24.7 and 2 percent, respectively. Both the FJP and the Salafist Al Nour Party have since denied alleged intentions of political unification.

Tamarod (Arabic: تمرد, romanized: tamarrud, "rebellion") was an Egyptian movement funded by the General Intelligence Service (Mukhabarat) and UAE to overthrow the 1st democratically elected Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi. The nominal aim was to register opposition to and force him to call early presidential elections. The goal was to collect 15 million signatures by 30 June 2013, the one-year anniversary of Morsi's inauguration. On 29 June 2013 the movement claimed to have collected more than 22 million signatures (22,134,460). A counter campaign was launched in support of Morsi's presidency which claimed to have collected 11 million signatures. The movement was planning to become a political party following the 2014 Egyptian presidential election.

The movement helped launch the June 2013 Egyptian protests which was part of the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état.