Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s visit to Ankara last Sept. 4 marked an important turning point in Egyptian-Turkish relations, with consequences that have already reverberated in the region and especially in North Africa and the Horn of Africa.
The meeting had been preceded by Turkish President Erdogan’s visit to Cairo last February, which had enabled the start of a thawing phase in the diplomatic crisis that had begun 11 years earlier as a result of the Egyptian military’s intervention against the government of Mohamed Morsi.
The two countries announced the establishment of a bilateral Strategic Cooperation Council for high-level coordination of mutual regional prerogatives, which met for the first time in Ankara during the Egyptian president’s visit and plans to hold regular annual meetings.
The first tangible results of this phase of renewed cooperation have fostered a clear calming of the rivalry between the two countries within the political dynamics of Libya, where Cairo and Ankara have expressed willingness to work together to facilitate local stability and push the two political entities of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica to resolve their historical differences.
The thaw in Turkish-Egyptian relations thus seems geared to focus in Libya on the opportunities of reconstruction and developments in the hydrocarbon production sector, which is capable of offering significant profit margins for both countries and is bound to consolidate a lasting platform of common interest.
At the same time, last Nov. 9, the Turkish military attaché to Libya travelled to Benghazi to meet with the Secretary of the General Command of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army, Lt. Gen. Khairi Al-Tamimi, again signalling a strong discontinuity in this direction from the past and demonstrating Turkey’s interest in a resumption of dialogue with the authorities of Benghazi.
The visit follows the one made to Istanbul last October by General Saddam Haftar, son of Khalifa Haftar, where he met with the Turkish Defense minister and initiated a formal thaw after more than a decade of broken relations.
No less significant are the developments in cooperation between the two countries in Somalia, where Egypt, in coordination with Turkey, has deployed its own military contingent and transferred substantial amounts of weaponry to Somali federal forces. The stated intent of wanting to support the government in Mogadishu in its fight against the al Shabaab militias is actually a pretext for exerting new and greater political and military pressure against Ethiopia, with whom no progress has been made regarding the dispute over the GERD dam development on the Blue Nile.
The support provided by Egypt to Somalia is thus aimed at achieving the twofold result of exerting on the Addis Ababa government a potential military threat along Ethiopia’s southern borders, as well as increased support for the Somali government, which in turn is affected by a serious diplomatic crisis with Ethiopia. Indeed, the Somali government has expressed its condemnation for the understandings reached between the Addis Ababa and Hargeisa governments regarding the possible development of an Ethiopian port on the Red Sea, in the face of the concomitant recognition of Somaliland’s independence.
Turkey, which has close ties with Ethiopia, and to which it has sold large quantities of armaments during the conflict in the regional state of Tigray, has not stood in the way of Egyptian plans in Somalia, indeed coordinating with the government of Cairo in order to facilitate its access to the country. A stance demonstrating the relevance for Ankara of the renewed relationship with Cairo, even as it seeks not to alter its relations with Addis Ababa, with which it has strong economic ties.
Moreover, on October 27, President Al-Sisi also received in Cairo his Algerian counterpart Abdelmajid Tebboune, with whom they reaffirmed their mutual intention to defend both Libya and Sudan from foreign interference, while confirming their commitment to fostering a political solution to the ongoing local crises.
A meeting that, again, marked a decisive step forward in relations with Algeria, which had been affected by a substantial cooling over the past decade, mainly as a result of Egypt’s assertive policy in Libya.
