Egypt’s President Sisi to visit Turkey for first time since taking power

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi of Egypt will visit Turkey’s capital Ankara on Wednesday, Turkish authorities confirmed on Tuesday evening, as the two countries attempt to rebuild diplomatic ties damaged by years of major political disputes.
It is his first trip to the country since taking power more than a decade ago, and follows an official invitation by his counterpart President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkish president visited the Egyptian capital in February this year as Cairo and Ankara have sought to repair relations. At the time, President Sisi said the visit had “turned a new page.”
The visit on Wednesday will include the first meeting of a presidential-level strategic co-operation council between the two countries, a body that was restructured following Mr Erdogan’s Cairo trip, the Turkish government’s communications directorate said in a statement.
“At the council meeting, all aspects of Turkey-Egypt relations will be reviewed, and joint steps that can be taken in the upcoming period to further develop bilateral co-operation will be discussed,” the statement said. “On the occasion of the meeting, the signing of various documents aimed at strengthening the contractual basis of relations is also on the agenda.”
Major political differences over the past decade have rocked the relationship, although economic ties have remained strong: trade volume topped $4.9 billion in the first seven months of 2024, according to Turkish Statistical Institute data.
Ties soured following Mr Erdogan’s vigorous opposition to the 2013 coup that brought Mr Sisi to power, following the removal of the president at the time, Mohamed Morsi. Cairo saw Turkey’s position as overtly supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood, and as an intervention in Egyptian internal affairs.
Turkish support for Islamist movements more widely, and general Turkish wariness of rulers brought to power by military coups, deepened the distrust between the two nations, and the two countries withdrew their respective ambassadors soon after.
Egypt’s concerns over the presence of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood exiles in Turkey were slightly alleviated after Ankara took measures to tone down their criticism of the government in Cairo.
Ankara’s wider Africa policy has also been a divisive issue. Turkey’s 2020 military intervention on the side of the UN-recognised, Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) in Libya angered the Egyptian government, which supports Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who rules the east of the country. Cairo believes that the presence of foreign troops in the divided North African country undermines its national security concerns, analysts said.
“Libya continues to be a sticking point, but less so now because there haven’t been massive shifts in the power dynamics, and the current situation is not an imminent threat for anybody,” Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group think tank, told The National.
“Of course if you ask the Egyptians they are going to say that they want all foreign troops out [of Libya] … they are speaking about the Turks when they say they want foreign troops out, and that their presence in Libya is undermining the political process and their border concerns.”
Cairo has also taken umbrage at Ankara’s significant support for Ethiopia, especially in the construction of a major dam on the Nile, which threatens one of Egypt’s only supplies of fresh water.
The meeting on Wednesday will also include discussion of regional issues, including the war in Gaza, the Turkish government communications directorate said. Egypt has been a key player in continuing efforts to broker a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, and Turkey has been widely critical of the military operations in Gaza that followed Hamas’s October 7 attacks.