Reconciliation with Turkey almost impossible – Imad Eddin Hussein

Posted in: Friday 30 October 2020 – 9:40 PM | Last update: Friday 30 October 2020 – 9:40 PM

Is there really a rapprochement between Egypt and Turkey ?!
I asked this question to more than one observer of this relationship, so there was a kind of consensus that as long as Recep Tayyip Erdogan remained the president of Turkey, it is most likely that the relations of the two countries will not witness a real improvement or it will be an urgent and formal improvement and will not last.
Their logical argument is that Erdogan is obsessed with the idea of ​​caliphate and leadership of the Arab and Islamic worlds, and therefore his idea of ​​rapprochement with Egypt is seen as a step in achieving this goal.
We heard and read dozens of Turkish statements from the first foreign officials, ending with Erdogan himself, related to their desire to improve relations with Egypt. They said, “We appreciate Egypt and want to resume relations with it, and that its army is great.”
The last of these statements was made by the spokesman for the Turkish presidency, Ibrahim Kalin, who said that “Egypt is one of the important countries in the region and the Arab world,” but they revealed the strange vision that Turkey views Egypt. He said during an interview with a local Turkish channel on 14 October, we cannot ignore what happened in July 2013, but if Egypt showed the will to move with a positive agenda on regional issues, Turkey is ready to respond to that, especially on issues such as Libya, Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean. So, the rapprochement that the Erdogan regime talks about with Egypt requires from their point of view that Egypt change its policy to serve the narrow Erdoganist agenda and forget its supreme national interests.
What they said is the truth that really expresses the Turkish view of Egypt, they want us to support, support and adopt Erdogan’s extremist policies in Libya and support the armed militias there, and to support Hamas only in Palestine and not the rest of the representatives of the Palestinian people, and to be against Greece and Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean from Put the minds of Erdogan back, and we support his occupation of northern Syria and his continued aggression against Iraq.
Egypt was not at all anti-Turkey, but it endured many abuses and attacks by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the pillars of his rule and his party since the Egyptian people launched their revolution on June 30, 2013 and we discovered after that that this revolution not only overthrew the rule of the Brotherhood, but also dropped Erdogan’s project To control the region, whether under the banner of the Islamic Caliphate or the Ottoman Sultanate.
Since this time, Erdogan’s reaction has been many times more fanatic, hateful and rampant than the reaction of some leaders of the Brotherhood themselves, and we have seen him turn his country into a base from which extremists and terrorists launch their attacks against Egypt and many Arab countries, and even openly incite violence, terrorism and strife.
Egypt was very patient with Erdogan’s actions, then it was forced to move in Libya and set red lines at Sirte and Jufrah, when it discovered that the threat to its national interests had reached dangerous and advanced stages.
The Turks asked to meet with the Egyptians more than once, and at different levels, and the Egyptian response was clear and specific, as Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry expressed that we are dealing with actions, not words.
Egypt is not hostile to the Turkish people, but rather views them as a friendly Muslim people, and our economic relationship with them is still going on, but our main disagreement is with Erdogan’s destructive actions.
The minimum is for the Egyptian demands that Turkey stop its support and harboring of terrorists and extremists and their satellite channels that have spread discord and terrorism, and that it withdraw its mercenaries from Libya and stop its aggressive policies in the eastern Mediterranean.
General estimates are that Erdogan is not capable of changing his ideological ideas, and therefore rapprochement on correct grounds is almost impossible, and unless a miracle occurs and he is convinced that his ideas and perceptions are closer to illusions, he will continue to practice his policies that brought Turkey something like isolation in the region and the world, and he is no longer theirs From a friend except the Brotherhood and its offshoots in Libya, Somalia and Qatar. Ten years ago, the “zero opponents” policy turned into “zero friends” now.
The question is if this is the case of Turkey under Erdogan’s rule, is it possible to talk about an “Arab-Egyptian-Saudi-Emirati-Bahraini” reconciliation with Qatar, or whether its government has become merely a tool in the hands of both Erdogan and the United States to move it as he wants.
A question that needs subsequent discussion.

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