Egypt's politics: an army charged with keeping the constitution

What the constitution asks of the armed forces

The text in force is the constitution approved by referendum on 18 January 2014 and amended by a second referendum in April 2019. Article 1 calls the state the Arab Republic of Egypt, a democratic republic based on citizenship and the rule of law.

Article 200 says the armed forces belong to the people. Their duty is to protect the country and its territory and to maintain the constitution, democracy, the civil basis of the state and the people's gains, rights and freedoms. Freedom House dates the duty to protect the constitution and democracy to the 2019 amendments, calls the wording vague and says it strengthened the legal underpinnings of the military's political influence. The BTI's 2026 country report reads it as placing the military effectively above the constitution, with a constitutional right to intervene in politics.

The president is Supreme Commander under Article 152 but may not declare war or send troops to fight abroad without consulting the National Defence Council and winning two-thirds of the House of Representatives; if the House has been dissolved, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces must be consulted instead and the cabinet's approval obtained. Under Article 201 the minister of defence is commander-in-chief, appointed from among the army's own officers, and under Article 234 only with that council's approval. The Wikipedia account of the 2014 text limited the approval to the first two full presidential terms, and the text as revised in 2019 gives it no end date.

Article 203 has the National Defence Council, chaired by the president, discuss the armed forces' budget, which enters the state budget as one figure. Freedom House reports that budget documents leave out allocations to military state-owned enterprises, and the Wikipedia article on Egypt records that the size of the military is treated as a state secret.

How officers made the republic and kept the presidency

Egypt's national day is 23 July. It marks the seizure of power by the Free Officers on 22 to 23 July 1952, which Britannica and Wikipedia call a coup and the State Information Service calls the revolution that led to the declaration of the modern republic. Political parties were abolished in January 1953, and on 18 June 1953 the monarchy was formally ended, with Maj. Gen. Muhammad Naguib as president.

Naguib lasted less than a year and a half before he was put under house arrest, and Gamal Abdel Nasser was elected president in June 1956 as the only candidate. Anwar Sadat, Nasser's vice-president and himself a Free Officer, succeeded him in September 1970. After Sadat's assassination in 1981, Hosni Mubarak took office through a referendum in which his was the only name, and by Britannica's chronology he was returned the same way in 1987, 1993 and 1999.

Parties came back under Sadat, with laws permitting them by 1976 in Britannica's account, and the BTI dates the formal multiparty system to 1977 and calls it a veneer over the dominance of the National Democratic Party. The first presidential election with challengers came in 2005, on a turnout under 25%.

For most of those decades the country lived under an emergency law enacted in response to the war of 1967, which expanded police powers, restricted constitutional rights and legalised censorship. Britannica counts it in force continuously from 1981 and for all but 18 months since 1967, until it expired on 31 May 2012.

Who governed Egypt from the uprising to the referendum

Protests began on 25 January 2011, and after 18 days Mubarak resigned on 11 February and handed power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces under its chairman, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, which suspended the constitution and dissolved both chambers two days later. Its amendments passed a referendum on 19 March with 77% of the vote.

Elections to a new People's Assembly ran from November 2011 to January 2012, and on 14 June 2012 the Supreme Constitutional Court dissolved it, in Britannica's account. On 17 June, the second day of the presidential run-off, the council issued a supplementary constitutional declaration that restricted the incoming president's powers and gave the council sweeping legislative and executive authority. Mohamed Morsi of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood's party, was sworn in on 30 June. In mid-August he retired several senior members of the council and revoked its declaration, and in November he decreed that his authority would not be subject to judicial oversight until a permanent constitution took effect. That constitution passed in December 2012 with 64% support on a 33% turnout.

Mass protests on 30 June 2013, the first anniversary of his inauguration, were followed by a military ultimatum. On 3 July the army suspended the constitution, removed Morsi and arrested him. The defence minister, who was also commander of the armed forces, announced the removal, and Adly Mansour, chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, became interim president. Britannica files the period under the heading of the June 30 Revolution, after the protests, while Freedom House and the BTI call the events of 3 July a coup. This catalogue records both names and adopts neither.

The dispersal of pro-Morsi sit-ins on 14 August 2013 killed 595 protesters by the Wikipedia count. The Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed that year as a terrorist organisation, and a committee of 50 drafted the constitution approved in January 2014.

How the presidency was lengthened and who may stand

Article 140 now sets a six-year term and bars anyone from holding the office for more than two consecutive terms; the 2014 text had set four years. Article 226 protects the rule, providing that texts on re-election may not be amended unless the amendment brings more guarantees. The 2019 amendments put a transitional Article 241bis beside it, which ended the term then running six years after the 2018 election result and gave the president then in office the right to be re-elected once.

Freedom House reads the effect as two years added to the existing term, carrying it to 2024, followed by a third term won in December 2023 with 89.6% of the vote, as the election authorities reported it. The BTI gives the official turnout as 67% and says most observers put the real figure much lower. Ahmed Tantawi, the challenger both reports name, suspended his campaign in October 2023 after failing to collect the required endorsements, with more than 100 of his supporters arrested, and in February 2024 he was sentenced to a year in prison over election documents. In the BTI's reading the limit rules out any further term after the one ending in 2030.

A candidate must be born to Egyptian parents, with no other citizenship ever held by the candidate, either parent or the spouse, must be at least 40 and must have performed military service or been legally exempted from it (Article 141). Nomination needs 20 elected members of the House, or 25,000 voters in at least 15 governorates with at least 1,000 in each (Article 142), and Freedom House reports that the authorities used that rule in 2023 to disqualify the only serious competitor.

Impeachment needs a majority of the House to sign the motion and two-thirds to pass it (Article 159), and under Article 161 two-thirds may instead put a withdrawal of confidence in the president to a referendum. If the voters refuse it, the House itself is dissolved.

How the House and the restored Senate are filled

Egypt's first popular assembly was established in 1866 and disbanded after the British occupation of 1882, and the constitution of 1923 made the country a parliamentary monarchy. Under Article 102 of the present text the House of Representatives has at least 450 elected members, at least a quarter of the seats are reserved for women, and the president may appoint up to 5% more. Members serve five years.

Freedom House describes the 2020 elections to both chambers as marked by the detention of critics, low turnout, claims of fraud and vote buying, and severe interference by the security services. The Unified National List, headed by the Mostaqbal Watan (Nation's Future) Party, won all 100 party-list seats in the Senate, and Mostaqbal Watan won all 284 party-list seats in the House; in October 2020 the president appointed 100 senators. Women held 27.5% of House seats in 2021, and the House was elected again in 2025.

The upper chamber was created in 1980 as the Shura Council, with 264 members of whom 176 were elected. The army dissolved it on 3 July 2013, the 2014 constitution left it out, and the amendments of 2019 reinstated it as the Senate. Its role is advisory. Article 249 requires its opinion on constitutional amendments, development plans and treaties of alliance, and Article 253 states that the government is not accountable to it.

What power the legislature holds sits in the House. A new government has 30 days to win its confidence (Article 146), the House may withdraw confidence from a minister after an interpellation (Article 131), and the president may dissolve it only after a referendum (Article 137). Freedom House reports that laws from the cabinet pass without meaningful contest, and the BTI that the chamber elected in 2020 is made up almost exclusively of supporters of the government.

How the courts and prosecutors are appointed

Article 184 declares the judiciary independent and makes interference in its affairs a crime with no statute of limitations. In the BTI's description the courts form three branches: the ordinary courts under the Court of Cassation, the State Council for administrative disputes, and the Supreme Constitutional Court, which alone rules on whether laws are constitutional.

The BTI writes that new laws and constitutional amendments have brought the judiciary under tighter control. Under the revised text the president appoints the head of each judicial body from its seven most senior deputies and chairs a Supreme Council for the judicial bodies (Article 185), chooses the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court from its five oldest deputy heads (Article 193), and picks the prosecutor general from three nominees of the Supreme Judicial Council (Article 189). Freedom House reports that a military general was appointed the court's first deputy justice in 2022.

Article 204 confines military trials of civilians to attacks on military facilities, equipment, funds or personnel, but a presidential decree of 2014 placed all "public and vital facilities" under military jurisdiction and sent thousands of civilian defendants before military courts. Freedom House reports that the change was made permanent in 2021. The BTI adds that legislation of July 2018 effectively grants senior officers immunity for crimes they may have committed after the events of 2013.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights counted 4,202 death sentences over a decade, 448 of them carried out, in figures Freedom House cites in its 2025 report, and close to 400 defendants were sentenced to death in 2024. In January 2025 parliament approved changes to the Criminal Procedure Code that, in the BTI's account, give prosecutors greater powers to extend pretrial detention without judicial oversight.

Which parties and religious bodies the constitution allows

Article 74 lets citizens form parties by notification, forbids any party founded on religion or on discrimination by sex, origin, sect or geography, and allows a party to be dissolved only by a court. More than 100 parties were registered in 2015, by the Wikipedia count. The Muslim Brotherhood, whose Freedom and Justice Party had won the presidency in 2012, was outlawed in 2013 and the party dissolved, and Freedom House reports that some Islamist parties still operate in a precarious legal position.

Article 2 makes Islam the religion of the state and the principles of sharia the principal source of legislation. Article 7 makes Al-Azhar an independent Islamic institution and the main authority for religious sciences and Islamic affairs, funded by the state and led by a Grand Sheikh who cannot be dismissed; the BTI credits it with "significant veto power in all matters related to religion". Article 3 makes the principles of Christian and Jewish law the main source of the laws on those communities' personal status and the choice of their spiritual leaders, and Article 235 required parliament to pass a law on building and renovating churches.

Under the protest law of 2013 the Interior Ministry may ban, postpone or relocate a protest with a court's approval, and unauthorised gatherings of ten or more people can be dispersed by force. The NGO law of 2019, No. 149, limits the fields in which civil society groups may work and how they are funded, and the state recognises only unions affiliated with the Egyptian Trade Union Federation. The BTI's 2026 report records several private media outlets bought by United Media Services, a company owned by the General Intelligence Service, and more than 500 websites blocked since 2017.

How the governorates and the new capital are run

Egypt is divided into 27 governorates, which the State Information Service, citing the statistics agency CAPMAS on a page last updated in October 2025, groups into seven regions with 225 cities and 4,727 villages beneath them. The president appoints the governors, and Freedom House reports that most of them are former military or police commanders.

Article 180 calls for an elected council in every local unit, with a quarter of the seats for people under 35, a quarter for women and at least half for workers and farmers. None has been elected since 2008, Freedom House records, and the last elected councils were dissolved in 2011. The BTI reports that a government draft law of 2016 on new councils had been neither debated nor voted on by the time of its 2026 report.

Article 222 names Cairo as the capital. The government finished moving its ministerial headquarters to the New Administrative Capital, east of Cairo, in 2023, and the government district there holds the cabinet headquarters and the parliamentary buildings, Ahram Online reported in October 2026, when the city had about 30,000 permanent residents. The armed forces' headquarters, the Octagon, is in the new city too. The BTI counts the capital, announced in March 2015, among the mega-projects that give the military opportunities to boost its economic performance.

Who Egypt has stood with since the peace treaty

Why the Arab League is based in Cairo

Sadat shifted Egypt's Cold War alignment from the Soviet Union to the United States, expelling the Soviet advisers in 1972. After the war of October 1973 he signed disengagement agreements with Israel, and on 19 November 1977 he addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem. The Camp David Accords followed in September 1978, and the peace treaty of 26 March 1979 provided for Israel's withdrawal from Sinai within three years and a buffer zone along the border patrolled by UN peacekeeping forces.

Egypt lost the financial support of the Arab states and was expelled from the Arab League, which it had belonged to since 22 March 1945 and whose permanent headquarters is in Cairo. The League moved to Tunis and returned in 1989. Under the present text a treaty of peace and alliance would need a referendum before ratification (Article 151), and no treaty may concede state territory.

American aid began in 1975 and exceeded $1 billion a year by 1981, in Britannica's account, and US military assistance stood at $1.3 billion a year in 2015 by the Wikipedia figure; the BTI reports $95 million of it withheld in January 2025 on human rights grounds. The BTI also records Egyptian mediation with the United States and Qatar behind the ceasefire deals between Israel and Hamas of December 2023 and January 2025.

Freedom House puts Emirati and Saudi support since 2013 at close to $100 billion in aid, investment and deposits, and the BTI values the Emirati Ras al-Hikma deal of February 2024 at $35 billion. Egypt became a full member of BRICS in January 2024. Relations with Sudan improved from early 2020 through coordination over the Ethiopian dam, Egypt backed the Sudanese Armed Forces when war broke out there in April 2023, and about 1.2 million Sudanese had fled to Egypt by November 2024. The two countries also dispute the Hala'ib Triangle, and this catalogue records the dispute without taking a position on it.

What the constitution says about the Nile

Article 44 commits the state to protecting the Nile and "maintaining Egypt's historic rights thereto", and the State Information Service describes Egypt as a country that "depends entirely on the Nile to meet its water needs". The Blue Nile rises at Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and Ethiopia began building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on it in 2011, with a capacity Sudan's foreign minister gave the Security Council as 74 billion cubic metres. The three countries signed a Declaration of Principles in Khartoum on 23 March 2015.

Egypt holds that rules for filling and operating the dam had to be agreed first, in a legally binding agreement. At the Security Council on 8 July 2021 its foreign minister said more than 100 million Egyptians faced "an existential threat" and that Ethiopia had begun filling unilaterally within days of Egypt's warning of 29 June 2020. Ethiopia's minister for water, irrigation and energy replied that the dam carried the hopes of "65 million Ethiopians that have no access to electricity", and that Egypt and Sudan had built dams and canals without regard for other riparian countries.

In September 2025 Egypt wrote to the President of the Security Council about an Ethiopian event marking the dam's completion, which Egypt deems a violation of international law. Ethiopia's economy article covers the same dam as a power project, and this catalogue records both positions and takes no side between them.