ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey has resumed diplomatic contacts with Egypt and wants more cooperation, Turkish leaders said on Friday, after years of tension since the Egyptian army toppled a Muslim Brotherhood president near Ankara.
Any thaw in the ties between the two regional powers could have repercussions in the Middle East, where Cairo and Ankara sought to influence events at several critical points and to position themselves on opposite sides in a Mediterranean maritime dispute.
Two Egyptian intelligence sources said Turkey proposed a meeting to discuss cooperation, but suggested that contacts were still only preliminary – a view later supported by a report by Egyptian state news agency MENA.
President Tayyip Erdogan said that contacts “were not at the highest level, but just below the highest level. We hope to be able to continue this process with Egypt with much more strength”.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was quoted by the state news agency Anadolu: “We have contacts with Egypt both at the level of intelligence and at the level of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs … Contacts at the diplomatic level have already started.”
Relations with Cairo have been icy since the Egyptian army ousted Mohammed Mursi, the first democratically elected president and Erdogan’s ally, after protests in 2013.
An Egyptian security officer received a call from a Turkish intelligence officer on Thursday, outlining Turkey’s desire for a meeting in Cairo to discuss economic, political and diplomatic cooperation, Egyptian intelligence sources said.
The Egyptian official accepted the appeal and promised to respond as soon as possible, Egyptian sources said.
The call came after unofficial contacts between Egyptian and Turkish security officials, in which communications between the two sides were discussed. The issue of maritime boundaries, a source of tension between Turkey and other countries in the eastern Mediterranean, has not been raised, according to the sources.
Egyptian state news agency MENA reported that “there is nothing that can be described as a ‘resumption of diplomatic communications'” between the two countries, citing an official source.
He added that Egypt expects any country with which it has normal relations “to comply with the principles of international law and good neighborliness”.
Rebuilding trust will be difficult. In addition to tensions over the withdrawal of disputes from Mursi and the Mediterranean, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said last week that the Arab League expressed its “categorical rejection” of Turkish military interventions in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
GULF STATES
Cavusoglu’s comments come as Turkey seeks to repair strained relations with various regional powers. He said on Friday that Ankara will pay back if Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates take “positive steps” to overcome recent tensions.
Ties with Riyadh were strained due to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 and a dispute between Qatar’s ally Turkey and other Arab states in the Gulf. Trade collapsed due to an informal boycott of Saudi companies.
Turkey is also at odds with the United Arab Emirates over the conflict in Libya, and the two countries have accused each other of disturbing regional stability.
“There is no reason why our ties with Saudi Arabia will not be repaired. If they take positive steps, we will take positive steps. The same goes for the United Arab Emirates. We do not want to fight with anyone,” said Cavusoglu.
Khashoggi was killed and quartered by Saudi agents in 2018 and a U.S. intelligence report concluded that Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the operation.
“We never blame Saudi Arabia’s leadership,” said Cavusoglu. At the time, Erdogan said the operation was ordered at the “highest levels” of the Saudi government. Erdogan spoke to King Salman in November and they agreed to resolve the differences through dialogue, said the Turkish presidency.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara and Mohamed Ahmed Hassan in Cairo; additional reporting by Omar Fahmy; Editing by Dominic Evans, William Maclean)