Turkish delegation to arrive in Egypt on May 1 in reconciliation drive

Ankara has pledged to implement more measures against Brotherhood channels

A Turkish delegation will visit Egypt in May in response to an invitation from the Egyptian side, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said.

This comes one day after Cavusoglu announced the beginning of a new phase in relations between Turkey and Egypt, with the possibility that there will be reciprocal visits in the coming period by ministers and diplomats.

He said a Turkish ambassador to Egypt would be appointed soon, after Egypt expelled Turkey’s diplomats in November 2013.

Cairo had set conditions for normalizing relations, and in the first tangible step to ease tension Ankara pressed Muslim Brotherhood channels operating in Turkey to reduce the severity of the criticism directed at Egypt. It also offered assistance to Egypt in solving the Ever Given tanker crisis that blocked the Suez Canal for days.

Ahmed Samir, a political analyst on Turkish affairs, said that Turkey had pledged to implement more measures against the Brotherhood before the end of Ramadan. However, Egypt demanded faster action, and the Turks appear to have done this, announcing that two Egyptian journalists in Ankara who were famous for attacking the Egyptian regime has been silenced. “Cairo may have accepted the measures that Turkey took,” he said. Samir said that the head of Turkish intelligence, Hakan Fidan, was in charge of negotiations with Cairo over issues such as the eastern Mediterranean and Libya, but he was waiting for Erdogan’s final decision. He noted that Ankara had already implemented many of Cairo’s requests for the normalization of relations, and the meeting that was announced by the Turkish foreign minister is one form of this normalization.

Samir pointed out that the return of relations between the two countries would benefit both countries in the reduction of tension and promote the sharing of natural resources in the eastern Mediterranean region. The analyst said that the new American approach under Joe Biden encouraged the countries of the region to sort out their relations independently.

Fadi Sayed, an Egyptian analyst in international relations, said that if the Turks were in good faith then the relationship with a large country such as Egypt, which makes up a quarter of the population of the Arab world, could not be ignored and both peoples would benefit.