Turkey seeks new dialogue mechanisms with Egypt: AKP spokesman

ANKARA

Turkey is seeking to establish new mechanisms for discussing bilateral issues with Egypt, the spokesman of the ruling Justine and Development Party (AKP) has said, informing that a senior delegation of the Foreign Ministry will travel to Cairo to discuss the road map for the normalization of ties.

“We are exerting efforts to establish new mechanisms with Egypt to talk about the issues between us. Thus, a delegation under the leadership of deputy foreign minister is going to Cairo for this purpose,” AKP spokesman Ömer Çelik told reporters after a weekly meeting chaired by AKP Chairman and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on late April 3.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Önal is expected to visit Cairo this week to meet his Egyptian counterparts to discuss the normalization of the ties after an eight-year-long bilateral tension.

Apart from bilateral ties, the developments concerning Mediterranean, hydrocarbon activities and regional security will also be discussed between Turkish and Egyptian officials, Çelik said.

This visit will help the two countries to establish a framework to accelerate this dialogue mechanism for both Mediterranean-related issues and bilateral ties, he added.

The ties between the two countries were strained after a military coup staged by Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi toppled Egypt’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi in mid-2013. Turkey strongly condemned the coup and slammed el-Sissi, who later became the head of Egypt.

The efforts to normalize ties between the two countries started last year through a dialogue established by the intelligence services of the respective countries. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu spoke with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on the phone during the recent weeks.