ANKARA (Reuters/Xinhua) – Turkey and Egypt may restore full diplomatic ties and re-appoint ambassadors mutually ‘in coming months,’ Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday.
Ankara and Cairo may re-start diplomatic consultations led by deputy foreign ministers as part of a normalization process “soon,” Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara.
After years of tension, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan shook hands with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Qatar this month in what was described by the Egyptian presidency as a new start in bilateral relations.
Turkey’s relations with Egypt turned sour after former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi was ousted in July 2013 and his Turkish-backed Muslim Brotherhood group was outlawed, prompting the two countries to expel each other’s ambassadors.
With conflicting positions over the conflict in Libya and the maritime borders in the Eastern Mediterranean region, Ankara and Cairo held their first diplomatic talks in eight years in 2021.
Turkey has tried to mend its frayed ties with regional countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the past few years.