Egyptian-Turkish relations have been witnessing a severe setback which peaked in mid-September when the two countries recalled their envoys.
In mid-September Turkey sent its ambassador, Hüseyin Avni Botsalı, back, while Egypt has refused to return its ambassador to Turkey, demanding a formal apology from the Turkish authorities for the harsh statements of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) officials against Egypt and mainly the sheikh of Al-Azhar. Erdoğan and his party cannot publicly apologize (at least for now) because of the upcoming local and presidential elections in Turkey.
Turkey tried to test the waters with Egypt when they asked Egypt's current government to pave the way for Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu to meet with deposed President Mohammed Morsi in return for Ankara holding talks with Egypt's interim President Adly Mansour and interim Prime Minister Hazem Al-Beblawi, although not with Egyptian army chief Gen. Abdel Fatah el-Sisi but the offer was turned down by Cairo, which told Botsalı: “We would be glad to have Davutoğlu visit. Egypt is your second home. However, it is impossible to arrange a meeting with Morsi.” In fact, if Turkish diplomats had gotten the opportunity to meet with Morsi, they would have used it to respond to domestic skeptics who say that Turkish foreign policy has changed from zero enemies to zero friends.
Turkey started to judge the situation in Egypt after July 3 based on its democratic credentials and its historic experiences with military interventions in politics that is best explained by Mustafa Akyol in his article published in Al-Monitor on Aug 21 under the headline “Turkey condemns Egypt's Coup.” It is not something bad for Turkey to be blamed for sharing its own experiences with coups with its neighboring countries. But the real question to be asked here, do all the Egyptians buy the content of the Turkish advice or not? Did the Turkish office of public diplomacy exert more effort to reach out to the different segments in Egyptian society and tell them that Turkey supports ideas and principles rather than people? The main task of public diplomacy offices all over the world and in theory is explaining the goals, principles and values of country A's foreign policy to the society of country B, and Turkey failed in that aspect, not just in Egypt but in other countries that suffer from sectarian and political divisions in our region to the degree that made Turkey a part of these conflicts. However, Turkey went on its way and Erdoğan resumed his rhetoric without assessing his policy's feedback and without guessing what might happen in Egypt.
And here our question comes: What will Turkey do if al-Sisi (who Turkish officials have named the Egyptian Kenan Evren) becomes Egypt's next president?
Reports have surfaced with news of an Egyptian movement called “Complete Your Favor” aimed at mobilizing public support for Gen. al-Sisi to run for the presidency, while security services, Facebook fan pages and retired generals appear on TV channels, marketing the man for this mission, claiming that state institutions won't run efficiently unless there is a strong, charismatic military leader whom they fear. Al-Sisi asked that these campaigns be cancelled, saying that “protecting the will of Egyptians is more prestigious that ruling Egypt,” but in his first interview with Al-Masry Al-Youm, an Egyptian newspaper, he said, “It is too early to say something about this issue.”
Whether al-Sisi will run for president or not, Egyptian-Turkish relations will not return to the days of Morsi, and Turkish scholars' ideas about Egypt's participative role in Turkey's own understanding of the Middle East is very far from being achieved now. Turkish decision makers must understand this well moving forward and put it in their considerations.
After the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, there is no political actor who shares Turkey's own understanding of the Middle East and who believes in the concept of regionalism marketed by Turkish foreign policy. Arab nationalists and liberals have their own perception of the Middle East. They don't like to call it this way but they name it the “Arab regional system,” which excludes Turkey, Iran and Israel (or non-Arabs). They believe that Turkey is a puppet of a US project in the region which seeks to recruit Arab countries, that Iran poses a danger to Gulf countries and that Israel is the historic foe of Arabs. This became clear with the words of Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy, a member of the al-Dostour Party, to the Russia Today TV channel that “a non-Arab state can't rule the Arab world.”
The old regime perception about Turkey is not so different from that of liberals and nationalists; they also perceive Turkey as a regional competitor and not a real partner, one who is driven by economic interests and attempts to seek regional leadership at their expense.
The Salafists, despite looking at the region from a purely Sunni perspective, favor Turkey only when it comes to tensions with Iran but will not favor any future rapprochement between Turkey and Iran as they do not favor the secular Turkey and its system, but cannot hide their admiration for Turkey's stance regarding Palestinians and Syrians.
The last active actor in Egypt is the youth forces who haven't had a clear perception of the Middle East up until now but are strongly influenced and impressed by the excessive use of violence by the Turkish police against the Gezi Park protesters and Erdoğan's supportive rhetoric for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
This does not mean that Turkish foreign policy and Egyptian foreign policy will never meet. There are areas that will force the two countries to be situated on the same side, like reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, the Iranian nuclear issue, the Syrian issue and seeking a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. However, activating these fronts will be a hard task on both countries' diplomacies and the degree of calmness in political relations between the circles of decision-making in both countries.
In spite of the ups and downs in political relations, the main backbone was and still remains the economic dimension. Economic ties between the two countries were not affected during the Hosni Mubarak era nor during the Morsi era and are not expected to be affected in the future, either.
The two countries enjoy a $4.2 billion trade balance. Turkey exports $3.9 billion worth of goods to Egypt and imports only $0.3 billion. Despite the fact that this is in favor of Turkey, it will be harmful for Ankara to cut ties since Turkish goods to Egypt are not competitive and can be replaced by Chinese or Asian goods. Also, Turkey uses Egyptian routes to reach markets in Gulf countries since roads through Syria and Iraq are not safe. On the other hand, Egypt is in dire need of any foreign direct investments from any country to stem the bleeding in foreign currency reserves and stop the continuous closures of factories in Egyptian industrial zones. Therefore, Turkish-Egyptian economic ties are strong and interdependent due to free market forces more than political will.
Whether Turkey will face an inevitable shift in its foreign policy because it is swimming against the current in the region and the expected change in decision making circles, or whether Turkey will reassess its “precious loneliness” and become disengaged from intra-Arab conflicts (for example, the Iraqi foreign minister's last visit to Ankara to prepare for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's visit to Turkey), Turkey should instruct its office of public diplomacy to reach out to different segments of Egyptian society and stop the deterioration of the image it has been building for years. On the other hand, Turkish diplomacy should construct bridges, seek communication with other Egyptian political actors and work on the prejudgments that Egyptians have about Turkey to secure areas of cooperation and minimize probabilities of conflict in the future.
