Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is visiting Ankara today for talks with President Tayyip Erdogan, his first presidential visit in 12 years amid a rewarming of frosty relations between the two regional powers.

Sisi’s return visit to Turkey comes after Erdogan’s trip to Cairo in February 2024 – the Turkish president’s first trip to Egypt since 2012.

The agenda of the talks

In Ankara al-Sisi and Erdogan will preside over the meeting of the Turkey-Egypt High Level Cooperation Council.

“All aspects of Turkey-Egypt relations will be reviewed and possible steps to further deepen bilateral cooperation will be discussed at the Council meeting,” the Turkish presidency’s Communication Directorate said in a statement.

“In addition to bilateral relations, during the talks there will be an exchange of views on regional and global issues, in particular on the Israeli attacks on Gaza and the occupied Palestinian Territories,” the same statement added.

On the agenda of the talks are the opportunities for long-term cooperation in the fields of energy, health, tourism and the defense industry. The target for the volume of trade between the two countries, which currently stands at $10 billion, has been set at $15 billion. During the meeting, the steps to be taken to achieve this goal will be evaluated.

When did the ice break?

After the 2013 military coup in Egypt, relations between the two countries entered a period of crisis and their diplomatic relations were downgraded to a diplomatic level. Tayyip Erdogan had sided with ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, calling Al-Sisi a “murderer and coup plotter”.

The ice between the two presidents began to melt in November 2022, when they shook hands on the sidelines of the World Cup in Qatar and with the mutual appointment of ambassadors by the two countries last summer.

In early August, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited Cairo and there he announced that the first meeting of the Turkey-Egypt High Level Strategic Cooperation Council would be held during the Egyptian president’s visit to Turkey and that he and the Egyptian his counterpart Badr Abdelati discussed the preparatory work for this meeting.