Ankara’s Cairo opening falls by the wayside
Egypt’s unilateral declaration of its western maritime border with Libya in a decree signed by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is, in addition to being another strong signal against the purported strength of the Turkish-Libyan memorandum, a very serious indication of a setback in the diplomatic efforts of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan has in recent months expended a lot of personal energy in his attempt to normalize relations with Sisi, often using channels friendly to both sides. The latest example was his encounter with Sisi under the gaze of Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani on the sidelines of the soccer World Cup opening ceremony.
However, the encounter was followed by a new cold snap when Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry bluntly announced that exploratory contacts between Egypt and Turkey had been suspended.
Naturally, the Qatari ambassador, who is a crucial player in efforts to normalize relations with Egypt, and the chief of staff for Turkey in Cairo were informed prior to Shoukry’s announcements, but the revelation effectively tore down the narrative from Ankara’s extremely well-orchestrated propaganda machine portraying Turkish-Egyptian differences as more or less procedural.
Well-informed sources say that the main thorns in the Turkey-Egypt rapprochement are the inability to agree on the date of launching elections in Libya. Needless to say, for Egypt, which is locked in a struggle to dismantle the last traces of Islamist terrorism in the Sinai Peninsula, the creation of a second front in the West (Libya) is seen as a threat if not an openly hostile act. There is also Turkey’s engagement in a manner that undermines Egyptian interests on issues that are considered by Cairo to be of the utmost security.
