Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced Saturday in Cairo "
to prepare a meeting
" between Turkish Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, to seal the end of a decade of estrangement between the two countries.
During a press conference with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Choukri, Cavusoglu said "
want to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries at the highest level
".
“
It is possible that we will disagree in the future but we will do everything to avoid breaking our relations again
”, he assured.
Cavusoglu had received Mr. Choukri at the end of February in Turkey after the earthquake which affected nearly a sixth of the Turkish population.
Relations between the two countries had been brutally severed since Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi came to power in 2013.
Read alsoTurkey breaks the ice with Egypt
The dismissal by Sissi of the first democratically elected president of Egypt Mohamed Morsi, from the Muslim Brotherhood and a great ally of Turkey, then made Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeat that he would "never" speak to
"
someone
like
“Sissi.
In the aftermath of the February 6 earthquake that killed nearly 48,500 people in Turkey, the two men had however spoken by telephone after exchanging their very first handshake in November at the World Cup in Qatar, another country with which Egypt recently revived after accusing him of closeness to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Saturday, Cavusoglu assured that "
after the
Turkish elections", including the presidential one scheduled for May 14, "
our president will meet President Sissi
".
Commercially, trade between Egypt and Turkey has never stopped: it has grown from $4.4 billion in 2007 to $11.1 billion in 2020, notes the Carnegie Research Center.
In 2022, Ankara was even the first importer of Egyptian products worth four billion dollars.
But disagreements remain between the two capitals, Istanbul having become "
the capital
" of Arab media critical of their governments, in particular those close to the brotherhood of the Muslim Brotherhood, considered "
terrorists
" by Cairo.
And the interests of Cairo and Ankara also diverge in Libya where Turkey has sent military advisers and drones against Marshal Khalifa Haftar, a strongman from the East, supported in particular by Egypt.