Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan arrived in Cairo on Wednesday to meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi after years of fractured ties between the two countries.
Erdoğan’s vociferous criticism of Sisi’s administration, branding him a “murderer” and “coup leader”, had been a defining feature of the strained bilateral ties. However, the evolving geopolitical landscape and developments in the Middle East have prompted Erdoğan to recalibrate his stance towards Sisi and the Egyptian government.
The engagement signals a departure from Erdoğan’s earlier declarations of having zero intent to meet with Sisi nor even appear in the same frame, demonstrating a pragmatic shift in Turkey’s foreign policy.
The visit is seen as a major achievement for Sisi, since Turkey was the only country that had not, until now, recognised the Egyptian government which had come to power in a military coup.
Turkey, which had fallen out with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states supporting Sisi, and was isolated from the developing energy equation in the Eastern Mediterranean due to its frosty relations with Egypt, Israel and the Republic of Cyprus, had entered a period of “precious loneliness” in foreign policy, in the words of İbrahim Kalın, the president’s chief foreign policy adviser at the time.
Accompanied by a delegation of key ministers, including Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Defence Minister Yaşar Güler, Erdoğan’s visit to Sisi, in order to revive and re-institutionalise relations, marks the first high-level engagement between Turkey and Egypt in over a decade.
The meeting between the two leaders is expected to focus on a range of issues, including the crisis in Gaza, efforts to halt hostilities, and the expansion of bilateral trade and cooperation, according to Turkish media, which extensively covered the visit.
However, BBC Monitoring Service reported that Egyptian media coverage of the visit was limited and focused mainly on possible economic agreements.
The cold relationship between the two nations stemmed from the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprising in 2011, which saw the ousting of long-time Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The subsequent rise to power of Mohamed Morsi, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and supported by Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) due to shared ideological grounds, was short-lived, ending in a military coup led by Sisi in 2013.
After years of diplomatic tension between Turkey and Egypt, diplomatic efforts gained momentum last November when Sisi and Erdoğan shook hands on the sidelines of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
Later, in November 2023, Erdoğan praised Sisi’s efforts on Gaza, following a joint summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League in Saudi Arabia. At the summit, Erdoğan was also in the same frame as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, with whom he has also been on a rapprochement course for some time.
