Alwaght- With the visit to Turkey of Egyptian President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi on Wednesday, a new era will begin in their relations, raising a flag of peace after relatively long period of tensions.
In this regard, Milliyet newspaper of Turkey reported that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Egyptian counterpart will meet in Ankara on August 4 to discuss necessary steps to implement Gaza ceasefire. This meeting comes as a year ago, the two countries normalized ties after over a decade.
Milliyet newspaper reported that the meeting between the leaders of the two countries will have three main cases of discussion. The first case is the ceasefire in Gaza and work on providing relief and sending humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people. The second is to increase the level of cooperation between Cairo and Ankara and increase the volume of trade from the current $10 billion to $15 billion.
The third case has to do with defense plans and signing a deal to supply drones to the Egyptian army. The two leaders will also discuss the Eastern Mediterranean and Libya, reports said.
El-Sisi’s Ankara visit comes in response to Erdogan’s visit to Cairo on February 14, the first after 11 years of heightened tensions. De-escalation of the two countries has taken a twisted course to bring the two countries closer after years. In 2013, when Defense Minister el-Sisi toppled the first democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi in a foreign-plotted military coup, Ankara cut off ties to Cairo. At the time, Erdogan said that he will never talk to el-Sisi. Turkey even harbored some of the fugitive leaders of Muslim Brotherhood, to which Morsi was affiliated.
This Turkish approach continued in the following years, and during the 51-day Gaza war in 2014, Erdogan said that el-Sisi was “no different from others. He himself is a tyrant." In 2019, Erdogan accused the Egyptian authorities of killing Mohamed Morsi and even promised to sue them in international courts, but none of these promises and threats were acted on.
As the time went by, Erdogan's hostile policies against el-Sisi also subsided, and due to the tension in relations with Arab countries and reaching an impasse in his regional policies, the Turkish leader inevitably took the path of de-escalation, and now many obstacles to the normalization of relations have been removed.
Common view on Palestine
El-Sisi’s visit to Ankara comes amid ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, and the two countries are working to make coordinations to stop this genocidal war. Turkey and Egypt are among the most influential countries in the Palestinian conflict, and the two countries' political views on the Palestinian issue are close, and their solution is establishment of a Palestinian state within the borders of 1967 based on international conventions, with East Al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital. The two countries emphasize the need to immediately stop the ongoing war in Gaza and attempting to ease the plight of the Gazans.
Muslim Brotherhood, the main sticking point
Over the past two decades, Turkey under Erdogan has been the biggest supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood groups in the region, while el-Sisi government has been part of a regional anti-Muslim Brotherhood alliance with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. So, the most important point of difference between the two countries and the center of many geopolitical differences was this issue. However, it seems that Erdogan has made changes to Ankara's announced policies in order to reach an agreement with Cairo on regional and bilateral issues.
Egyptians have been extremely angry with Ankara's extensive support for the Muslim Brotherhood, and therefore, one of the issues that must be resolved in the path of normalization is the issue of Turkey's support for this Islamist movement. By visiting Cairo, Erdogan showed that he recognizes el-Sisi's government as the legal authority in Egypt, and in order to appease Cairo, he must quit any support for Egypt's internal opposition and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Driven by political interests and in favor of rapprochement with Arab countries, over the past two years, Erdogan scaled down support to the Muslim Brotherhood and closed Hamas offices in Ankara in 2022, paving the way for détente with Cairo.
The Libyan case has been one of the cases of dispute between the two countries, and Egypt considers Turkey's support for the Libyan government of national unity as a threat to the security of its borders and demands a fundamental flexibility of Ankara. Because of Ankara's extensive support for the legitimate government of Libya, Egyptians consider this country a serious obstacle to the conclusion of political negotiations between the two conflicting parties in Libya. Ankara appears to have shown some flexibility in this case as well, recently softening its stance in Libya.
During Erdogan’s visit to Cairo, the two sides emphasized the need to strengthen consultation on the Libyan case in a way that would help holding elections and lead to the unity of the military structure, and that their success in achieving stability in Libya would present a model and a way to calm the conditions of other cases. It seems that Erdogan does not insist on the full power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya and knows that a national consensus must be formed to stop the Libyan civil conflict.
Economy top on agenda
Among the areas of expected cooperation in the new period are rebuilding of economic relations and efforts to increase bilateral trade, which is currently $10 billion and is projected for $15 billion in the next five years.
The two countries are struggling with a set of economic challenges including inflation and national currency value slump, which are overshadowing prices of strategic goods and food.
Erdogan, who has focused the program of his last government on improving the economic situation, is trying to help the growth and prosperity of the economy in the country by expanding relations with regional countries. Entering North Africa is at the top of Turkey's aspirations, and he seeks to invest and benefit from this resource-rich region.
Having in mind that Egypt has been struggling with economic crisis in recent years and in the past months due to the tensions in the Red Sea and the decrease in shipping traffic from the Suez Canal, it has suffered a serious crisis in terms of income, some experts believe that el-Sisi’s government plans to organize the troubled economy through Turkey's economic aid. Although Turkey is not in a very good condition economically, by attracting foreign investment and agreements made with Arab countries and rejuvenating its tourists, it can prospectively help Egyptians.
In the last month, the Turkish-Egyptian Commercial Council held talks in Istanbul to coordinate its positions and negotiate ways to boost economic, trade, and investment cooperation. They reached agreements, and reports say that during el-Sisi’s visit, new projects will be raised. Further strengthening existing trade relations with new agreements, diversifying mutual investments and establishing projects in the field of transport and energy will improve economic cooperation of the two countries.
From another aspect, Turkey and Egypt are each other's rivals in a competition to dominate the Eastern Mediterranean energy resources. Turkey is trying to hold part of the natural gas reserves in the region and Egypt is also trying to block Turkey's domination of this wealth. Therefore, energy is one of Ankara's requirements to improve relations with Cairo so that it can easily benefit from the rich resources in the Mediterranean Sea.
Fruitful talks on the Turkish-Egyptian relations will lead to a new course of peace in the region. This "new peace" can spread through the whole region. Egypt and Turkey are two big and important countries and both are eager to work out solutions to the challenges.
Defense and security are another area of cooperation between the two countries, and since Turkey has made significant progress in the production of weapons, especially drones, in recent years, the Egyptians also want to use these military achievements to strengthen their defense base. Given the escalation of tensions in the region and the possibility of the war spreading from the occupied territories to other parts of the region, Egypt is preparing itself for any scenario in order to stay safe against Israeli warmongering.
Ankara and Cairo have come to belief that with continuation of tensions, they cannot achieve their stated aims, and so after 11 years of rifts, they have chosen reconciliation and peace.
