Turkish, Egyptian FMs to discuss ties, exchanging envoys

ANKARA

Turkish and Egyptian top diplomats, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Sameh Shoukry, will have another meeting for the normalization of the ties in Ankara on April 13 with expectations that they will announce when the two nations will exchange ambassadors.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry announced that Shoukry will pay a visit to the Turkish capital upon the invitation of Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu. “At the meetings during the visit, bilateral relations and regional developments will be discussed,” the statement said.

It will be the third meeting of the two ministers in less than two months. Shoukry visited Adana and Mersin on Feb. 27 to show Egypt’s support and solidarity to Türkiye and the people of Türkiye in the aftermath of two devastating earthquakes on Feb. 6. He was welcomed by Çavuşoğlu in Adana Airport, where the two ministers held a brief press conference. Later, the ministers met in Cairo on March 19 and discussed the ongoing normalization process and pledged to further improve ties based on mutual interest and respect.

Türkiye and Egypt were at odds following the coup by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who replaced the country’s first democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi. There was no communication between the two countries until early 2021 when Ankara and Cairo sat around the same table for mending the ties. However, the true groundbreaking incident took place in late 2022 when el-Sisi and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan shook hands and held a meeting on the occasion of the opening of the World Cup in Qatar.

In Ankara, Shoukry and Çavuşoğlu are expected to take a further step regarding the normalization process by announcing their decision to increase the diplomatic representation back to the level of ambassadors.

In a televised interview earlier this week, Çavuşoğlu said that a potential meeting between el-Sisi and Erdoğan may take place following the May 14 elections in Türkiye but recalled that the two foreign ministers started a process for the appointment of ambassadors.

“We may perhaps announce this during Shoukry’s visit,” he said. “It is time to take concrete steps,” Çavuşoğlu stated, expressing his hope that ties will further improve with the appointment of the ambassadors.

Libya on the agenda

The minister reminded that his talks with Shoukry in Cairo were positive and result-oriented and stressed he was expecting the continuation of this mood in Ankara through concrete steps.
Among other issues the two ministers will discuss will be the ongoing conflict in Libya and the eastern Mediterranean. Türkiye and Egypt have long been supporting the rival groups in Libya but their positions are in a tendency of approaching as both sides call for holding the elections for a united government in the North African country.

There are also efforts for the creation of a single security body in a bid to end the division of Libya by the rival groups.

On the eastern Mediterranean, Türkiye has long been struggling not to be isolated from the East-Med Gas Forum, a regional body built by Egypt, Israel, Greece and Greek Cyprus, that seeks cooperation of littoral countries in discovering natural gas in the sea and transporting them to the world market.