Turkiye’s Erdogan set for first Egypt visit in over decade

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to arrive in Cairo on Wednesday to meet his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, sealing a long-running rapprochement between the two men.

Erdogan on Monday said the pair would discuss “every effort” to stop the “bloodshed” in the Gaza Strip, while Turkish state news agency Anadolu said the meetings would also cover economic, trade, tourism, energy and defence matters.

The visit will be the Turkish president’s first to Egypt since 2012.

The two countries cut ties in 2013 after Sisi, then Egypt’s defence minister, ousted president Mohamed Morsi, an ally of Turkiye and part of the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Turkiye’s Erdogan rejects US pressure to cut Hamas ties At the time, Erdogan said he would never speak to “anyone” like Sisi, who in 2014 became president of the Arab world’s most populous nation.

But relations have thawed since 2021, when a Turkish delegation visited Egypt to discuss normalisation.

By last July, Cairo and Ankara had appointed ambassadors to each other’s capitals for the first time in a decade.

In November 2022, Erdogan and Sisi shook hands in Qatar in what the Egyptian presidency heralded as a new beginning for their relations.

The two leaders have since met in several other countries, including Saudi Arabia in November and at the G20 summit in India in September.

Despite the long freeze in relations, trade between the two continued. According to Egyptian central bank figures, Turkiye is Egypt’s fifth largest trade partner.

Earlier this month, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said an agreement had been finalised to provide drones to Egypt.

While the two regional powers have often been at odds – including supporting rival governments in Libya – their interests are aligned on two major conflicts: Sudan and Gaza.

Erdogan said his meetings in Egypt, as well as the United Arab Emirates, would “look at what more can be done for our brothers in Gaza”.