President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that they were awaiting to host Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Türkiye as the relations between the two countries are thawing. Speaking to reporters as he was returning from New Delhi, where he attended the G-20 summit and met el-Sissi on the sidelines of the event, Erdoğan said their meeting was “positive.”
“We discussed a meeting. Our foreign ministers and intelligence agencies are working on arranging new talks between themselves. (El-Sissi) is waiting to host us, but I told them that we were ready to host them (first). No date is decided and once it is decided, we will take steps," Erdoğan was quoted by the Turkish media on Monday.
Erdoğan said they would restore Turkish-Egyptian relations to “the level they deserved as soon as possible.” He noted that the two countries had great potential in economy and commerce and they would work to double their bilateral trade volume.
“We already set up a high-level strategic cooperation council and we will work to revive it. Improving our relations to a level better than we had in the past can help us to have positive results on many regional issues, particularly the Syrian issue,” he said.
Normalization between the two accelerated after el-Sissi and Erdoğan shook hands in Doha at the World Cup in 2022 and began to take off following the deadly February earthquakes in Türkiye and Erdoğan’s reelection in May. Diplomatic relations between Türkiye and Egypt have been maintained at the level of charge d’affaires on both sides since Egypt’s 2013 military coup, which overthrew the late President Mohammed Morsi. Relations have mainly been stable except for short periods of suspension in the 1960s, but they reached new heights when Morsi was elected president in 2012. After Morsi was toppled, Türkiye maintained contact with Cairo before downgrading diplomatic relations in 2013, while economic ties remained largely unharmed. In 2022, Türkiye was the largest importer of Egyptian goods, totaling $4 billion (TL 107.5 billion). Earlier this year, Cairo allowed Turkish citizens to obtain a visa on arrival, paving the way for advanced tourism.
Cairo and Ankara have also been at odds over Libya, where they backed opposing factions in an unresolved conflict, and also over maritime borders in the gas-rich Eastern Mediterranean. However, Türkiye has dismissed claims of rivalry with Egypt in the region and reiterated willingness for more cooperation.
