CAIRO —
A day after the
Egyptian president shook hands with his Turkish counterpart for
the first time in Qatar, the presidency in Cairo on Monday heralded a new
“beginning” in ties with Ankara.
اضافة اعلان
Abdel Fattah
El-Sisi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan “confirmed the depth of historical ties
between the two countries” during their brief encounter in Doha, spokesman
Bassam Radi said in a statement, signaling Egypt is finally ready to bridge
their nine-year rift.
The Turkish
presidency on Sunday released a photo of Erdogan and Sisi sharing an
enthusiastic handshake in front of
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani in Doha, with whom Cairo has also recently mended ties.
Relations
between Cairo and Ankara turned frosty in 2013 after Sisi deposed Islamist
president Mohamed Morsi and outlawed his Muslim Brotherhood.
Turkey has for
years served as a refuge for Islamist opposition activists, further stoking
tensions between the two regional powers.
Turkey and Egypt
held their first diplomatic talks in eight years last year.
Also last year,
Erdogan’s government demanded that popular Egyptian exiled talk show hosts tone
down their criticism of Egypt’s leader, in an apparent attempt to appease
Cairo.
And earlier this
month — as authorities in Egypt cracked down on activists amid a call for
protests during the
COP27 climate summit — Turkish security forces briefly
detained an exiled Egyptian dissident, according to rights groups.
But
long-standing disagreements over the countries’ opposing roles in war-scarred
Libya impeded moves towards a full rapprochement, until now.
Yet while
diplomatic relations between Cairo and Ankara have often been thorny, economic
exchange has continued unabated, with the volume of trade nearly tripling
between 2007 and 2020, according to the Carnegie Middle East Center.
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