Ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) lawmakers in Turkey are set to propose the establishment of a parliamentary friendship group with Egypt, said a senior AK Party legislator Tuesday.
Turkey and Egypt have been trying to repair broken ties, and Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu recently said that a delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Faruk Kaymakcı would travel to Egypt next month as part of the efforts.
The relations between Turkey and Egypt deteriorated after Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi toppled the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, in a coup after only a year in office.
Ankara has maintained its position that a democratically elected president cannot be deposed by a military coup and thus, has voiced its criticism of el-Sissi and his backers, including the West and some of Ankara’s rivals in the Gulf region.
The Egyptian government, on the other hand, urged Turkey not to intervene in an issue that it considers as the country’s internal affairs. The dispute led to a deadlock in bilateral relations for many years.
Recently, however, signs of a possible reconciliation have come from both countries, particularly due to the changing dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Turkey-Greece crisis over the region’s energy resources.
