CAIRO/ANKARA, March 17 (Reuters) – Turkey’s foreign minister will visit Cairo on Saturday in another sign of a diplomatic thaw after a decade of severance in relations between the two countries.
The arrival of Mevlut Cavusoglu will mark the first official visit of a Turkish foreign minister to Cairo since July 2013 and the overthrow of Mohamed Mursi by current President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Mohamed Mursi, an emblematic figure of the Muslim Brotherhood who died in 2019, was supported by Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan.
The visit comes two weeks after Meylut Cavusoglu’s Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shourky, visited Turkey in a show of solidarity after the devastating earthquakes that hit the country.
“All aspects of our bilateral relations will be discussed and exchanges of views will take place on regional and international issues,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.
The visit “paves the way for the restoration of normal relations between the two countries”, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a simultaneous statement.
It will make it possible to begin an “in-depth dialogue” with a view to achieving “a mutual understanding which serves the interests of the two countries”, added the spokesperson for the Egyptian ministry.
Turkey and Egypt had already shown signs of rapprochement in recent months, notably last year during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar during which Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Erdogan exchanged a handshake.
Following last month’s earthquakes, the two heads of state spoke on the phone and Sameh Shourky visited Turkey on February 27.
After visiting the earthquake-affected areas, Mevlut Cavusoglu said he could visit Egypt soon and that Erdogan and Abdel Fattah al-Sisi could meet “either in Turkey or in Egypt”.
In another sign of normalization, Mevlut Cavusoglu said in November that Turkey could reinstate its ambassador in Cairo “in the coming months”. (Report Nayera Abdallah in Cairo and Huseyin Hayatsever in Ankara, French version Augustin Turpin, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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