Turkish President Erdogan to visit Egypt on Friday

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi will receive his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Cairo on Wednesday, an unprecedented visit aimed at bringing about reconciliation after more than a decade of discord between the two countries.

On Monday, Mr. Erdogan said he was going to the United Arab Emirates and then Egypt to ‘see what more can be done for our brothers in Gaza.’ He added that Ankara was doing ‘everything to stop the bloodshed’ as more than 28,000 Palestinians were killed, the majority of civilians, according to the Hamas government, in attacks launched by Israel in retaliation for an attack by Palestinian Hamas militants in southern Israel in October 7.

This unprecedented attack resulted in the deaths of more than 1,160 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to the AFP news agency’s calculation based on official Israeli data. The Turkish president last visited Egypt in 2012 when he was prime minister. Mohamed Morsi, a major ally of Ankara, was the country’s president at the time. His Minister of Defense, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, overthrew him in 2013 and since then, Mr. Erdogan was referring to his statement that he would ‘never’ talk to ‘someone like him’. However, the relationship between the two has increased, their interests now converge in several regional conflicts including Sudan and the Gaza Strip. They shook hands for the first time in November 2022 during the FIFA World Cup. in Qatar, another country that Egypt joined recently after accusing it of being close to the Muslim Brotherhood. They also spoke a day after the February 6, 2023, earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey.

In July, ambassadors were appointed from both sides. In September, the two men spoke for the first time face-to-face on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi. While politically at odds for a long time, Egypt, and Turkey support two rival governments in Libya, trade ties you’ve stayed cool: Ankara is Cairo’s fifth trading partner. Early in February, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan announced the sale of drones to Egypt. Erdogan, who described Israel as a ‘terrorist state’ and Hamas as a ‘liberationist group’, summoned the Turkish ambassador to Tel Aviv at the beginning of November, saying it was impossible to ‘completely break’ ties with Israel.

Before October 7, several political leaders of Hamas lived in Istanbul. They have since been quietly asked to leave. Since the beginning of the conflict in Gaza, Mr. Erdogan proposed mediation but talks on a ceasefire have so far been led by Qatar and Egypt.