Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected president, was confined to a room at the Republican Guard headquarters. The defense minister, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, appeared on television. He suspended the constitution, announced a roadmap for new elections, and installed Adly Mansour, the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, as interim president. The announcement came after four days of protests where millions demanded Morsi's resignation. The military gave him a 48-hour ultimatum to resolve the crisis, which he dismissed as illegitimate. Morsi would spend the next six years in prison.
This event is often framed as a military coup. Its supporters labeled it a popular revolution, citing the scale of the protests against Morsi's year-long rule, which was criticized as inept and increasingly authoritarian. The Muslim Brotherhood, from which Morsi hailed, called it a betrayal of the 2011 Arab Spring. The distinction mattered for international response and domestic legitimacy. The United States avoided legally defining it as a coup, which would have triggered an aid cutoff.
The removal unraveled Egypt's brief democratic experiment. A violent crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins weeks later killed hundreds. A new government under el-Sisi, who later became president, restored authoritarian control more firmly than the Mubarak regime it had replaced. The July 3 intervention reset the Egyptian state, trading contested democracy for a stability defined by repression.