On Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah El-Sisi for the first time on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar amid tense ties between their countries.
The two leaders shook hands and greeted each other in the presence of Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in the Al Bayt stadium near Doha. While Erdoğan’s office said in a statement that he had met with El-Sisi and other leaders at the event, the Egyptian presidency has made no mention of El-Sisi’s meeting with the Turkish president.
Anadolu Agency reported that the two presidents met during a reception hosted by Sheikh Tamim and held a “brief conversation.”
Turkey-Egypt ties have steadily deteriorated since El-Sisi ousted his predecessor Muhammad Morsi in a military coup in 2013. Following Morsi’s ouster, Erdoğan, who was prime minister at the time, called the Egyptian military “enemies of democracy” and “brutal murderers.” Turkey recalled its ambassador to Egypt and accused Israel of engineering the coup.
President Erdogan has been chasing Pres Sisi around in pursuit of reconciliation. https://t.co/GnDbSc0ZoQ
— Steven A. Cook (@stevenacook) November 20, 2022
Erdoğan has also compared El-Sisi to Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad and called him an “illegitimate tyrant,” accusing him of purging the Muslim Brotherhood and other critics of the regime.
In 2019, Erdoğan called El-Sisi’s regime “authoritarian” and “totalitarian” after Egypt executed several Muslim Brotherhood members. “I will never meet with such a person. First of all, he needs to release all prisoners with a general amnesty. As long as he does not release those people, we cannot meet with El-Sisi,” Erdoğan declared.
In response, Egypt has cancelled military drills and high-level meetings with Turkey and was part of a successful campaign against Turkey’s 2016 bid to become a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. In addition, in 2019, El-Sisi used the term “genocide” to refer to Turkey’s massacre of more than a million Armenians between 1915 and 1917, a move that Turkey fiercely opposes.
Egypt has also condemned Turkey’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Ankara’s decision to provide refuge to several Brotherhood leaders.
Erdogan in 2019:
— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) November 20, 2022
“I would never meet someone like Sisi. First of all, all the political prisoners must be released with a general amnesty. Otherwise we won’t meet Sisi. The ones who meet him would be judged by the history”
Relations have become further strained over control of energy reserves in the Mediterranean Sea. In 2019, Turkey signed a maritime treaty with Libya to create an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Mediterranean Sea extending from Libya to Turkey. The deal was contested by Greece and Egypt, which argued that it is “illegal” because it violates the sovereignty of neighbouring countries.
Turkey, however, cemented its energy ties with Libya last month by signing an agreement on joint exploration of gas and hydrocarbon reserves in the Mediterranean, angering Cairo and Athens. The foreign ministers of Egypt and Greece met in Cairo last week to condemn the “illegal” agreement and vowed a legal response to Turkey’s measures.
The two countries also clashed in Libya during the second civil war from 2014 to 2020, with Ankara and Cairo militarily supporting rival groups in Libya to secure their respective energy interests. The Turkish-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) successfully pushed back the Egypt-backed Libyan National Army (LNA), led by warlord Khalifa Haftar.
However, Erdoğan has recently signalled his interest in normalising ties with Egypt as part of a wider effort to improve relations with regional countries, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. Turkey and Egypt started normalisation talks in 2021, and Ankara has even taken a few steps to appease Cairo, including asking Turkish media to limit their criticism of Cairo. During his visit to Indonesia for the G20 summit last week, Erdoğan said Turkey would “reevaluate the relations with the countries we have problems with,” including Egypt and Syria.