DW: The Egypt-Turkey “ice is melting”, but Cairo prefers Greece

Their relationships have never been easy and carefree for a long time, but now Egypt and Turkey they want to put them on a new footing, make a new beginning. This is what Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently said at the opening ceremony of the World Cup in Qatar. Their handshake in the presence of the Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and the announcement that they want to improve their relations in the future, went around the world. And indeed, shortly after the symbolic handshake there was movement. According to news agencies, intelligence delegations from both sides met in Egypt over the weekend. “Important speeches,” as a senior Turkish official told Reuters.

Both sides touched on military, political and trade issues, including energy projects,” the official said. Additionally, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday (November 28th) that both countries want to restore full diplomatic relations. which broke off in 2013 at the ambassadorial level. Immediately after the meeting between the two heads of state, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry also announced that further steps would follow. The aim is to normalize bilateral relations after “years of tension”, although “the talks so far have not yet led to a settlement of existing differences of opinion,” to thus record the existence of difficulties. And indeed, the list of disagreements and rivalries between the two countries is long and dates back to 2013.

The ice is melting, but is it enough?

At the time, the Turkish government had repeatedly described as “illegal” the ouster of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, who came from the army and ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogan himself had called al-Sisi a “coup”. After Egypt included the Muslim Brotherhood in list of terrorist organizations and banned it, many Muslim Brotherhoods found protection in Turkey. For its part, the Egyptian government accused Ankara of supporting Islamist organizations – especially the Muslim Brotherhood. Their relations remained strained for years. In the spring of 2019, Erdogan even stated that he had no intention of reconciling with al-Sisi.”I refuse to meet with an anti-democrat who sentenced Morsi and his friends to prison,” Erdogan said at the time. More recently, however, Ankara has asked Egyptian television stations operating in Turkey and linked to the Muslim Brotherhood or other opposition groups to tone down their criticism of the Egyptian government.

“In fact, the possibilities of the Egyptian opposition are increasingly limited,” says Christian Brakel, head of the Turkey office of the German Heinrich Böll Foundation. “Egyptian opposition figures are now toying with the idea of ​​settling elsewhere, and it cannot be ruled out that this trend could intensify,” Brakel speculates. But also in the Libyan civil war, the two countries faced each other as rivals in the political and economic field. While Egypt, – which notably retains a chargé d’affaires with the rank of ambassador in Tripoli, unlike the headless Greek embassy, ​​- supported the strongman of the exiled government in Tobruk, General Khalifa Haftar, to prevent with his help a possible formation of a government with the participation of Islamists, Turkey sided with the then prime minister of the internationally recognized government, Fayez al-Sarraj. With it, Ankara signed in 2019 the controversial Turkish-Libyan pact to delimit the maritime zones of the two countries, which Berlin also rejected as inconsistent with the Law of the Sea. More or less according to this, Turkish sovereignty would extend to Crete where Turkey suspects there are significant natural gas deposits. So far, Egypt has clearly sided with Greece in the gas reserves dispute.

In the summer of 2020, the two countries signed an agreement defining their economic zones in the eastern Mediterranean. The Turkish government had even criticized it as a “pirate agreement”. Now, however, Ankara seems to be turning more and more towards reconciliation and the search for new partners. It sends similar signals in the direction of two of Egypt’s traditional partners, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, notes Brakel. For years, the three countries have been partners in the Saudi-led international military coalition against the Houthi rebellion in Yemen. In addition, the two Gulf states share the Egyptian government’s attitude towards the Muslim Brotherhood, which they see as an ideological and political challenge and therefore a threat to their own authoritarian power.

Egypt prefers Greece

Barkel distinguishes another important parameter. Due to high inflation, the Turkish government feels compelled to readjust its course. “From these Gulf countries significant financial injections are coming to Turkey in view of the Turkish pre-election period, so it would be extremely possible that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have set the solution of the Turkish-Egyptian problems as a condition.” At the same time, the two Gulf states are aware of Turkey’s geostrategic importance, according to an analysis by the online magazine Al Monitor, and they also see the many investment opportunities offered by the Turkish market. Erdogan has already visited the United Arab Emirates in February this year and signed several cooperation agreements with the two countries. This should also have encouraged Egypt to expand trade relations with Turkey. According to a study by the Carnegie Middle East Center, the volume of trade between the two countries has actually more than doubled in the last 15 years. In this way, both countries are trying to compensate for supply problems from Asia, especially China caused by the pandemic, reports the English-language edition of the Turkish daily Al Sabah.

But also in the eastern Mediterranean, Egypt and Turkey are aiming for an understanding. “This is the most important issue for the two countries,” economist Ahmed Zikrala, who teaches at Al Azhar University, told Al Sabah. “Overall, however, the Cairo government is likely to have much less interest in rapprochement with Ankara than Ankara itself does for Cairo,” argues Brakel. “Because Cairo still has an important reason to rely on Greece rather than Turkey in the Mediterranean region. Greece is an EU country. Greece offers Egypt access to the European market. This also makes it a much more attractive partner than Turkey could ever be.”

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