Throughout the last eight years, Turkish–Egyptian relations have been at historic lows. Many people have pointed to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist ideology and personal affinity with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as the root cause of the tension. However, at a time when Erdogan has accelerated his Islamist kulturkampf (conflict between religious and civil authorities) at home, he now also pursues a rapprochement with Egypt abroad. 

This might be surprising for those who assume that Turkey has a consistently-applied and ideologically-driven foreign policy. On the contrary, Turkish foreign policy in general—and toward the Middle East in particular—has been shaped by interest-driven pragmatism and domestic political considerations. Thus, both Turkey’s tensions with Egypt and its recent attempts at rapprochement have more to do with Erdogan’s domestic political calculations and regional ambitions than his personal ideological leanings.

Turkey’s involvement with the Middle East has steadily increased since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002. Contrary to the most common assumptions, the early attempts by the AKP government to increase Turkish presence in the Middle East did not have a revisionist agenda. 

In fact, in the first decade of the 2000s, Erdogan’s foreign policy stayed in line with Turkey’s traditional foreign policy approach. That is, Ankara maintained a role of neutrality in the Middle East and a close alliance with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states.

This mantra of “zero problems with the neighbors”, made popular by former-AKP Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, was in fact a declaration of the Turkish intention to uphold the status quo. This policy pointed to Turkey’s willingness to cooperate with a diverse range of actors who had different and often conflicting ideologies, agendas, and political orientations. Relations with these actors were mostly driven by trade and a mutual need for economic cooperation. 

All of these general tendencies in foreign affairs were in line with the AKP’s domestic agenda, in which the party emphasised economic development rather than identity politics. The main domestic ally of the AKP during this period was Western-leaning Islamists and political liberals, who were also supportive of Turkey’s trade-based “zero problems” approach to foreign affairs.

In line with this overall regional policy, Turkey had good relations with the Mubarak regime in the early 2000s. During this time, ideological tensions remained between the AKP and the MB, as the latter found the former too moderate. Moreover, the fact that the AKP was formed as a splinter party from Erdogan’s political mentor (and later opponent) Necmettin Erbakan’s National Vision tradition—the Turkish equivalent of the MB—created additional hostility for the MB leadership, recalling unpleasant memories for the MB of the 1996 splinter of the Wasat party.

Uprisings Across the Mediterranean

Since the Arab Uprisings first started in Tunisia in 2010–2011, the AKP’s approach to the Middle East has radically changed. At home, Erdogan was at the apex of his power following his third consecutive electoral victory in 2011. He started to backtrack from his alliance with the liberals, as he no longer felt he needed their support, and preferred instead to concentrate power in his own hands in an increasingly personalistic style of governance. 

The AKP leadership was convinced they had to seize the “historic moment” and declare Turkey to be the regional hegemon which would transform the Middle East and North Africa in its mold. Claiming that Turkey—with its successful blend of Islam, democracy, and market economics—was the model for the Arab world, Erdogan embraced the uprisings. From that point on, much more cordial relations were established between the MB and AKP elites, and Turkey began to support the MB and its offshoots in Turkish regional politics.

It was the AKP leadership who convinced the MB to field a candidate in the 2012 Egyptian presidential elections, although the MB had earlier pledged not to do so. When Mohammad Morsi was elected the Egyptian president, the relations between the two countries reached historic highs. Erdogan and Davutoglu expected that an emerging Turkish–Egyptian axis would dominate the region. 

2013: The Year that Changed Everything

This picture once again shifted in 2013, when Morsi was ousted. The removal of Morsi from the government was certainly a shock to Turkey’s foreign policy strategy, as it was a major reaction to new power arrangements following the events of early 2011.

More significantly, Morsi’s ousting took place in the summer of 2013, when the AKP also witnessed its most serious domestic challenge since coming to power in 2002.

Growing public unrest among the Turkish secular middle classes with Erdogan’s increasingly personalized and authoritarian ruling style led to an eruption of mass protests when Erdogan declared his intention to transform a small park in central Istanbul into a luxurious shopping mall. 

Known as the Gezi Park Protests, the demonstrations unexpectedly spread overnight on May 28, 2013 to the entire country. Furthermore, in the first weeks of the protests Erdogan had difficulty mobilizing conservative masses in his favor; even his own party heavyweights disagreed with his harsh reaction against the Gezi Park movement. 

While the protests continued across the country well into the late summer and autumn of that year, Erdogan gradually managed to mobilize his base by claiming that the Gezi Protests were internationally orchestrated events aimed at toppling his government in the way that the MB had been removed in Egypt. When Erdogan and his Gulenist allies—an Islamic congregation with clear pro-Western policy orientation—fell out in late 2013, once again posing a threat to Erdogan’s power, his discourse of an international conspiracy against his Islamic-leaning government became even more instrumental.

Throughout 2013, Erdogan saw an opportunity in the plight of the MB members in Egypt. Knowing he needed to create a parallel between the events in Egypt and Turkey in order to mobilize his own conservative masses, Erdogan threw in with the MB and allowed many dissenting, MB-supporting Egyptians to stay in Turkey. 

His main message to his conservative constituency was—if they do not want to meet the same demise as the MB in Egypt—they should stand by Erdogan and the AKP. Any petty grievances between his supporters could be buried in the face of the existential threat the AKP and he, their leader, was facing. 

In a way, the more the MB suffered, the clearer the message of Erdogan became. As a matter of course, he opted to allow Turkish relations with Egypt to deteriorate rather than mediate between the new regime and the MB. 

From that point on, support for the MB became an issue of domestic politics, as Erdogan increasingly utilized the rhetoric of safeguarding the oppressed Muslim Brotherhood members and appropriated the four-finger Rabia symbol for his own political propaganda. 

Verbal attacks on Egypt’s new President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, became one of Erdogan’s favourite speech topics, and he created parallels between domestic Turkish opposition and the Egyptian president by arguing that both were pawns of a global conspiracy against Sunni Muslim political movements.

In the years that followed, tensions deepened as the two countries stood on opposing sides of various regional conflicts. In Libya, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Qatar crises, El-Sisi and Erdogan have been in opposition. 

Moreover, the Turkish military presence in Somalia and Syria, Ankara’s attempts to get a foothold on the Red Sea through a ninety-nine year old rent of the Suakin Island from Sudan, and Turkey’s cordial relations with Ethiopia were further actions that raised eyebrows in Cairo.

A Lopsided Rapprochement

In recent months, this picture has begun to change as several signs of a rapprochement between Turkey and Egypt have emerged. 

Following behind-the-door contacts between diplomatic and intelligence personnel, the first official bilateral meeting in years took place on May 5 in Cairo. While such a rapprochement might be to the benefit of both countries, it is clear that Turkey is more interested in mending the fences with Egypt than the other way around. Egypt, on the other hand, has put several conditions on the table without entirely closing the door. 

There are two factors that led to the Turkish push toward rapprochement with Egypt. First, Turkish efforts toward rapprochement with Egypt are part of a larger foreign policy adjustment triggered by Turkey’s increased isolation in regional politics. 

Turkey  has especially felt its isolation in the eastern Mediterranean conflict. Ankara has, for a long time, had maritime border issues with Athens, which have been further exacerbated by Turkish-Cyprus tensions. 

Turkey does not recognize the Republic of Cyprus as one entity and instead claims that the island is composed of two countries: a Greek state in the south and a Turkish state in the north. The latter has been recognized only by Turkey following its 1974 invasion of the island. These decades-old problems with Greece and Cyprus worsened when large gas fields were discovered starting in 2009 in the eastern Mediterranean. The maritime borders suddenly became economically important, as they would decide the possessor of the newly discovered natural gas. 

Moreover, as a result of its informal alliance with MB networks, Turkey now has bad relations with almost all of the littoral eastern Mediterranean states—Egypt, Israel, Syria, and partially Lebanon—and was excluded from the East Mediterranean Gas Forum headquartered in Cairo despite the fact that Turkey has the longest coastline in the eastern Mediterranean.

In an attempt to break its isolation, Turkey has signed a maritime border agreement with the United Nations (UN)-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Libya, in which it claimed an expanded exclusive economic zone in exchange for military support to the GNA. However, in doing so, it denied the exclusive economic zones of Greek Islands such as Rhodes and Crete, which violates the International Law of the Sea, and also intersected with the Egyptian–Greek maritime border agreement.

In the context of this agreement, Turkey deployed unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e. drones), armored vehicles, and military personnel and intelligence officials in training and advisory roles to Libya. Turkey also established at least one military training base in Libya and brought in mercenaries from Syria. Although there is no official count of mercenaries transferred, estimates range wildly from three thousand to sixteen thousand. These interventions changed the course of the civil war in Libya and enabled the GNA to protect itself and expand its area of control.

Moreover, the agreement interfered with a proposed pipeline that would transfer eastern Mediterranean natural gas to Europe. In the summer of 2020, Turkey started its own gas explorations in its claimed maritime borders and deployed its navy to protect the exploration ships. Thus, Turkey significantly raised tensions in the eastern Mediterranean. Further explorations conducted by Greece and Cyprus were temporarily halted and falling gas prices have proved the pipeline project to be unviable. 

However, Turkey is still keen on entering the ranks of the EastMed Gas Forum, and that requires improving relations with the coastal countries. Turkish rapprochement with Egypt has been paired with similar attempts with Israel.

In addition to its isolation on the Mediterranean, Turkey has become diplomatically cut off from much of the Arab world. The Turkish policy of leveraging MB networks during the Arab Uprisings led to the creation of two opposing blocs in the Middle East in addition to the traditionally Iranian-led bloc. 

On the one hand, there were coalesced Arab regimes that considered both Iran and the MB as regional threats. This first group, called the Arab Quartet, consisted of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE. Another group, led by Turkey and Qatar with MB network support, opposed the Arab Quartet. Tensions between these two blocs reached a boiling point in 2017 when the Arab Quartet countries imposed an embargo on Qatar. Turkey sided with Qatar, consolidating their alliance.

This regional polarization began to soften with the recent Al-Ula agreement between Qatar and the Arab Quartet that ended the four Arab nations’ blockade on Qatar. This rapprochement created further incentives for Turkey to mend its relations with the Quartet countries. As such, Turkey’s attempts at a rapprochement with Egypt are part of a larger process where Turkey aims to better relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE and end a period of intense regional rivalry. 

As a sign of this desire, Ibrahim Kalin, the presidential spokesperson and chief advisor to Erdogan on foreign affairs, recently declared that Turkey respects the Saudi court decision with regard to the Khashoggi murder trial. This represents a major reversal, as it was Ankara which leaked the evidence that linked the Khashoggi murder to the Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS). Kalin’s statement is an attempt to appease the Saudi leadership; however, it seems that the Saudis have stipulated a Turkish–Egyptian rapprochement as a prerequisite for a larger rapprochement with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

While this regional context seems to have prompted a cost-benefit analysis of sustaining tensions with Egypt, these calculations are also further boosted by domestic and global developments, as seen from Ankara. 

Domestically, a new coalition has emerged in Turkey, wherein Erdogan is ruling alongside the conservative-nationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and Avrasyacilar, or the Eurasianists. The Eurasianists—secular ultra-nationalists with a strong focus on anti-Westernism—are considered to be the architects of Turkey’s expansionist “Blue Homeland Doctrine”. This doctrine argues that Turkey’s claimed continental shelf, which stretches from the Black Sea across the Aegean to the Eastern Mediterranean, constitutes a maritime sphere of influence that must be protected. In line with this doctrine, Eurasianists are also major supporters of Turkey’s maritime agreement with Libya. They prioritize the eastern Mediterranean conflict and consider Greece and Cyprus Turkey’s primary rivals. This prioritization requires Turkey to mend fences with other eastern Mediterranean countries, namely Egypt and Israel.

The Eurasianists’ main political platform, the Patriotic Party (VP), consistently gets less than 1 percent in elections. However, in Turkish politics not everything is about electoral representation. Groups coalesce within the security and bureaucratic apparatuses of the government and oftentimes hold a huge sway of influence over ruling administrations and sitting heads of state. In the Eurasianists’ case they are overly represented in the security apparatuses, particularly within the Turkish navy. Historically, there have always been a small group of Eurasianist officers within the military. Their influence has increased in the wake of the failed July 15 coup and the subsequent purges within the military that have mostly targeted the NATO-serving Turkish officers.

While it is important not to exaggerate the power of the Eurasianists in designing today’s Turkish foreign and security policy, they propagate a political discourse on foreign affairs that is equally beneficial for the AKP’s domestic political agenda. This narrative is based on conspiratorial anti-Westernism and is in line with Erdogan’s claim that all the political and economic crises that Turkey is undergoing is due to a worldwide (i.e Western) conspiracy to prevent the rise of Turkish power.

At the global level, the Biden administration is creating tumultuous change in the Middle East, with significant effects on Turkish foreign policy. First of all, Erdogan will no longer be able to rely on the free card he received from Trump. Relying on his personal bond with Trump, Erdogan managed to avoid American reaction to Turkey’s aggressive and militarized foreign policy moves.

The Biden administration is keen on exerting pressure on Erdogan in an attempt to subdue Turkey’s recent aggression in foreign affairs. Both of these facts hold true for other leaders in the region, including Sisi and MBS. Biden will accelerate the long-awaited American withdrawal from the region, pushing regional actors to readjust their foreign policy positions. Such a global context provides incentives to all parties for a settlement of the region’s main problems. 

Challenges to Reconciliation

While Turkey is intent on mending bilateral relations and there is a mutual benefit for Egypt, the road to a better future for Egypt and Turkey is filled with several obstacles. Three issues are on the table: Turkey’s ongoing patronage of the MB and its offshoots; conflicting approaches to the Egyptian–Greek alliance in the eastern Mediterranean; and Turkish intervention in Libya as an extension of the eastern Mediterranean problem.

Solving the Mulism Brotherhood Conflict

Those who perceive ideology as key to Erdogan’s decision making mistakenly consider the MB as the main obstacle to rapprochement. It is not. 

Erdogan’s foreign policy has shown reckless pragmatism on various fronts, and he can easily backtrack if he sees the benefit. Yet, it is true that both countries stand at polar opposite positions in their treatment of the MB.

For Turkey, the MB is a respected Islamic organization with which Turkey has cordial relations, while in contrast, Egypt defines the MB as a terrorist group and demands that Turkey extradite its members. In the framework of upcoming negotiations, Erdogan and his government will not be able to meet such a maximalist demand. Rather, he should push for a centrist solution that could potentially be more appealing to the Egyptian government.

Accordingly, senior MB leaders living as Erdogan’s guests would have to leave Turkey for a third country, if they have not already done so. The remaining MB rank and file, which amounts to at least ten thousand people, could remain in Turkey, keeping a low profile. 

Turkey has already taken steps to curtail the media activities of the MB in Istanbul as a sign of goodwill. Given their desperate situation, the MB members will have to abide by Turkish demands. Ironically, this would mean that Sisi would delegate the burden of keeping the MB’s activities in Turkey under control to Erdogan. Such a midway solution would also enable Erdogan’s Islamist constituency to swallow the bitter pill of abandoning the MB. It might even trigger a domestic rapprochement within Egypt between the regime and the MB.

Solving the Libya Conflict

Libya, on the other hand, constitutes a much more difficult challenge in the way of rapprochement, but it also provides certain opportunities. Both sides have realized that they are not able to solely shape the course of events in Libya. 

Egypt has recently backtracked from supporting Haftar and instead thrown support behind the UN process. Turkey, likewise, recognized its limitations when Turkish-backed forces stopped in advance of the Sirte–Jufra line. National unity and stability in Libya are now in the interest of both countries; however, this point is more important to Egypt, which shares a 693-mile border with Libya. 

Therefore, one of Egypt’s top demands is ending the Turkish presence in the civil war-plagued North African country. Once again, mending relations with Egypt is shaped by and limited for Ankara by its own domestic political considerations and regional power balances. While Turkey intervened in Libya, attempting to break out of its isolation in the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey’s actions in the Libyan conflict also enabled Erdogan to appeal to nationalist and chauvinist tendencies at home by demonstrating the military might of Turkey and its advanced drone technology.

Were Ankara to retreat from this belligerent stance, there might be personal political costs at home for Erdogan. In order to minimize such costs, the Turkish president will try to postpone withdrawal from Libya as long as he can. At the moment, the Turkish position seems to be playing the Syrian mercenary card as a bargaining chip—as Ankara could possibly agree to withdrawing its Syrian mercenaries from Libya in exchange for the preservation of Turkish military presence there. 

However, Turkey might eventually have to withdraw entirely; in that case, Erdogan would have to frame the withdrawal not as a retreat, but instead as a victory. This is not an easy task, even for a seasoned politician like Erdogan.

Both in Libya and in relations with the MB, it is Turkey who has to make concessions. This shows that, during the rapprochement process, Turkey is negotiating from a point of weakness due to its current isolation among the regional community. Its ability to make progress in these contentious areas will depend on Ankara’s flexibility to find midway solutions to Cairo’s maximalist demands. 

Solving the EastMed Conflict

The conflict in the eastern Mediterranean is deeply linked to the Libyan crisis. The eastern Mediterranean conflict has two related, but separate, dimensions: economic and political. The economic dimension is related to the discovery of natural gas, including its drilling and transportation. The political-legal dimension refers to the delimitation of maritime borders and hence touches upon the sensitive topic of state sovereignty.

In the summer of 2020, Greece and Turkey came to the verge of military conflict due to their opposing positions in the eastern Mediterranean. Both Greece and Turkey are pushing for maximalist demands when it comes to their exclusive economic zone declarations. 

In the midst of their rivalry, Turkey conducted maritime border limitation agreements with Libya and Greece did so with Egypt. Egypt’s maritime borders had by and large been determined by a similar agreement with Cyprus. Turkey’s claims, however, are based on a shaky agreement with Libya that has yet to be ratified by the Libyan parliament. Moreover, as already mentioned, the Turkish-Libyan agreement intersects with the Greek-Egyptian agreement. Yet, this intersection takes place in the Greek economic zone, and Egypt is not necessarily harmed by the Turkish-Libyan agreement. 

Furthermore, Turkey argues that Egypt would have a larger exclusive economic zone if it had signed the maritime border agreement with Turkey instead of Greece. Meanwhile, Egypt is trying to position itself as the transportation hub of the discovered natural gas. Through its liquefied natural gas facilities, Egypt wants to process eastern Mediterranean gas and transport it to Europe. This appears more economically viable than the previously proposed pipeline projects. 

All of this means that Egypt has no interest in alienating other members of the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, and any Turkish expectation that Egypt will switch to the Turkish side seems rather unlikely. The best Turkey can hope for is to carry Egypt from a pro-Greek position to a more neutral position and get Egyptian support for an observer status at the East Med Gas Forum.

Possible Future Scenarios

Turkey might have to make concessions without gaining much more than breaking its current isolation. Yet, the state of regional and global politics dictates that Turkey strives for reconciliation with its rivals, and better relations with Egypt is of the utmost priority among these rivals. 

However, given the mounting challenges ahead, the real question is whether or not Turkey has the will and the strategic capacity to pursue a long-term rapprochement. More specifically, after formulating foreign policy for domestic consumption for many years, is Erdogan ready to pay the price at home for apparent capitulations?

Taking into account the interplay between the regional developments and Turkey’s own domestic politics, we can expect three different scenarios with regard to the evolution of the rapprochement process. 

In the most optimistic scenario, Turkey manages to meet Egypt at a halfway point with regards to the MB and Turkish military presence in Libya, as outlined above. In this case, Erdogan could face some domestic costs because he will need to sell (or attempt to sell) the move as a necessary and tactical retreat to his base. Perhaps Erdogan will be able to do this by arguing that softening Turkey’s isolation in the eastern Mediterranean will ultimately help Turkey’s economic future. 

Egypt would benefit from such a rapprochement as well. While Egypt demands the extradition of thousands of MB members, this demand is not viable in practice and might raise latent tensions at home. Instead, Erdogan guaranteeing that MB will not pose a threat to Sisi’s rule might even be more preferable than Turkey’s extraditing MB members. 

A joint understanding and cooperation in Libya might help bring stability to the North African region, which is of high priority to Cairo as Libya has been unstable for over ten years. With regard to the eastern Mediterranean, Egypt and Israel are comparatively less committed to an anti-Turkish position compared to Greece and Cyprus. Egypt might then take a more neutral position in the Turkish-Greek rivalry.

In more pessimistic scenarios, Egypt could insist on a more maximalist position. Such a position would include extradition of all MB members from Turkey and the removal of all Turkish or Turkish-allied military forces from Libya without providing Turkey compensation in the East Med. Ankara would respond to such a stubborn position from Cairo with only two options: submit or resist. 

In the case of submission to all Egyptian demands, Erdogan would likely incur enormous domestic political costs. This would be the least likely outcome as Erdogan’s room to maneuver has become quite limited in domestic politics due to his declining popularity. Shows of strength in global politics and a seemingly powerful Turkey are the few remaining selling points for the AKP at home.

In the final scenario, Erdogan rejects Egypt’s maximalist demands and the rapprochement process fails without producing any tangible outcomes. In this case, Erdogan would accelerate anti-Western rhetoric at home and stick with his confrontational policy abroad not only against Egypt but against other pro-Western regimes in the region such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. 

Taking all scenarios together, we can expect a mixed outcome. Both countries have gains to make from a rapprochement and normalization of relations. Yet, a grand bargain that would bring Turkey and Egypt to the same line on all fronts seems unlikely at the moment as the problems are plenty, inextricably intertwined, and come with domestic ramifications. It would be more realistic to expect the normalization of relations and a limited rapprochement between the two countries. The extent of this limited rapprochement will be shaped by Erdogan’s domestic calculations as well as regional power balances.