“One major effect of the war in Gaza was to accelerate a rapprochement between rival regional hegemons Turkey and Egypt, both Sunni Muslim powerhouses, after more than a decade of hostility triggered by the Arab uprisings in 2011,” notes Alia Brahimi, a senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs, in the first in a series of essays exploring the global implications of this regional diplomatic development. Egypt’s former ambassador to Turkey, Abderahman Salaheldin, explains why this improvement in relations matters: “With Egypt’s 110 million people and Turkey’s 90 million, the two nations represent nearly half of the Middle East’s population. Their armed forces are also the strongest in the region. Clearly, the opportunities for cooperation between the two countries, both regionally and bilaterally, far outweigh the areas of competition or potential conflict.”
Turkey and Egypt’s recent rapprochement comes after years of tension, sparked by the ousting of President Mohammed Morsi in 2013, which brought Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power. Bilateral political and diplomatic strains until now have limited Ankara and Cairo’s collaboration on regional crises across Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean in which both have interests at stake. Now, however, with Egypt and Turkey taking strides to repair their relations, the gates are open for cooperation on new strategies to tackle enduring crises. Still, regional rivalries, conflicting loyalties, and the role of external actors may complicate cooperation on critical matters like energy resources and tension in the Horn of Africa.
In the Horn of Africa, for instance, Egypt and Turkey have so far found their positions, but not their motives, converging, with Egypt’s deepened involvement in Somalia and rivalry with Ethiopia potentially complicating Turkey’s larger regional aspirations. In Sudan, the Egypt-Turkey thaw may be more promising, especially if a strategic partnership between the two can facilitate Cairo’s present attempts at mediation in Sudan, whose internal conflict risks spilling over into an already fragile Libya.
This set of essays, edited by the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Program and the Institute for International Political Studies, seeks to address these challenges and possibilities while also offering concrete recommendations during this period of tremendous change.
In partnership with
Image: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi shakes hands with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan after a signing ceremony in Ankara, Turkey September 4, 2024. REUTERS/Murad Sezer