By Daily Sabah,
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met several key Arab leaders, including Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, at a reception held before the World Cup opening ceremony in the Qatari capital Doha on Sunday.
President Erdoğan was accompanied by the host and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani as they met other visiting heads of state, including Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), el-Sissi, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and among others.
Erdoğan and el-Sissi met on Sunday in Qatar for the first time, a picture from the Turkish Presidency showed. Erdoğan briefly met, shook hands and talked to el-Sissi and other leaders.
Egypt and Türkiye have not deployed ambassadors since 2013 when relations worsened following the ousting of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi by military chief el-Sissi, now the country’s president. Türkiye-Egypt ties have continued at the level of charge d’affairs since 2013. During this period, brief meetings were held between the foreign ministers of the two countries on various occasions. Meanwhile, the Turkish Embassy in Cairo and consulate in Alexandria, as well as the Egyptian Embassy in Ankara and consulate in Istanbul, have continued their usual activities.
The normalization process between Türkiye and Egypt continues at a gradual pace. The two countries started consultations between senior Foreign Ministry officials last year amid a push by Türkiye to ease tensions with regional powers including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Israel and Saudi Arabia. Erdoğan said in July there was no reason high-level talks should not take place.
The president also hinted recently that Türkiye could revisit strained ties with regional countries including Syria and Egypt after next year’s election.
“We can reconsider ties with the countries that we have problems with,” he was quoted as saying by Turkish media last week aboard his plane returning from a G-20 summit in Indonesia.
Erdoğan reiterated that Türkiye hopes to maximize its cooperation with Egypt and Gulf countries “on a win-win basis,” at a time when Ankara intensified diplomacy to mend its fraught ties with Cairo and some Gulf Arab nations after years of tensions.
Erdoğan chatted with other world leaders including Kuwait’s Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al Ahmad Al Sabah and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the vice president and prime minister of the UAE and the ruler of Dubai.
The president held also talks with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
The opening ceremony was also attended by Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, Liberian President George Weah, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Senegalese President Macky Sall and Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
Erdoğan, a one-time semi-professional football player in his youth, also watched the opening match between Qatar and Ecuador.
Under a bilateral security cooperation agreement, Ankara deployed more than 3,000 police officers and security personnel to provide security for the World Cup with their Qatari counterparts.
The international football tournament runs through Dec. 18.
