Egypt’s Sisi to Visit Turkey as Regional Powers Eye Closer Ties
(Bloomberg) -- Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is preparing to host Egyptian counterpart Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi next week to strengthen ties after years of rancor and to discuss the war in Gaza, according to Turkish officials.
El-Sisi is expected to pay his first visit as president to Turkey on Sept. 4, according to people familiar with the matter, as the two Middle Eastern powers also work to boost energy and trade relations.
The visit will come around six months after Erdogan visited Cairo for the first time in over a decade. The outreach underlines Turkey’s efforts to improve ties with Arab states and get investment from the likes of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Egyptian officials weren’t immediately available to comment.
Egypt and Turkey were at odds for much of the past decade, in part because of the 2013 military-backed overthrow of El-Sisi’s predecessor, Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist close to Ankara.
Erdogan, who champions Islamist causes and backed Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, was an outspoken critic of El-Sisi long after he came to power. Turkey and Egypt also supported rival sides in regional conflicts, including when a battle raged around for years ago for the capital of Libya.
Now, the two nations are working to increase bilateral trade to $15 billion annually in the next five years from around $6 billion. They are exploring ways to cooperate in the fields of liquefied natural gas — of which Egypt is a producer — and nuclear energy, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said during a visit to Cairo on Aug. 5.
Turkey and Egypt are also seeking to expand an existing free trade agreement and restart freight shipping between the Turkish port of Mersin and Alexandria in Egypt, Fidan said.
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