Understanding Ankara’s new policy, normalization with Egypt

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s meeting with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi during their visit to Qatar for the World Cup opening resonated. Those who look closely at that picture can see Ankara placed the missing piece of the new game it set in the region. We will now discuss some details of this new game’s parameters, and the normalization process with Egypt.

Two blocs were formed against Türkiye, which has been in a power struggle in recent years with both global and regional actors. The first of these blocs was the global alliance, consisting of Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. The second bloc was designed against Türkiye in the sharing of energy sources in the East Mediterranean. This bloc included Israel, Egypt, Southern Cyprus, Greece, and France. Their aim was to share the energy sources in this region with the exclusion of Türkiye. Encouraged by this mechanism, Greece attempted to realize its maximalist demands against Türkiye. The U.S. was coordinating these two blocs. The EU, on the other hand, was backing this mechanism through covert financial and military sanctions, as well as diplomatic maneuvers.

If you picture the map, this was a major dual-bloc siege. Ankara developed a three-stage strategy to break this siege. These stages were immediate responses to the opposition bloc’s moves, break the alliance in the opposition bloc through normalization, and develop a supporting balance and new status quo with a new game plan.

Ankara made a deal with Libya within this scope and increased its influence. Reflecting its military power on the ground, it suppressed demands rising from Greece, and its supporter, France. It further activated its intelligence diplomacy, and thus launched the normalization processes – with Gulf countries and Israel – which, as a result, weakened the opposition bloc. (Note: Diplomatic sources project that the normalization process with Israel will continue even if Benjamin Netanyahu comes to power again.)

All these processes have now paved the way to the third stage. This new stage is based on developing a supporting balance and status quo for Türkiye in the region and the Mediterranean. As this new balance forms, Ankara’s objective is to develop reciprocal interest-based cooperation with countries along the Mediterranean, share energy sources in a fair manner, and intern the actors targeting Turkic interests. As a reflection of this, Türkiye is preparing to sign a deal with Algeria, similar to the deal signed last month with Libya, allowing for oil and gas exploration in Libya’s Mediterranean waters.

Now picture the map once again. Türkiye is building a new diplomatic, political, and economic line spanning the Gulf countries, Israel, Libya, and Algeria. Egypt is in the middle of this line, hence the importance of instituting relations with Cairo.

Mending ties with Egypt started simultaneously with the other countries, but it is proving to be a slow process. Egypt’s expectations from Türkiye come under two headlines. These are some Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) members’ operations in Türkiye, and the Libya policy. Cairo announced last month that normalization negotiations were halted due to Türkiye’s deal with Libya. The bottleneck was overcome through Qatar’s mediation. It is considered that Cairo’s Libya concern will not present an obstacle to the development of relations. The reason is that Egypt’s Libya policy is based on opposition to Türkiye. It is projected that conflicts will alleviate as relations normalize.

The critical matter here will be the exclusive economic zone deal to be signed between the two countries. Egypt’s previous deals with Greece and Southern Cyprus do not inhibit it from sitting at the negotiation table with Türkiye. On the contrary, it is eager in this sense, as a deal between Cairo and Ankara will add 11,500-kilometer-squares to Egypt’s maritime zone.

At this stage, the regional equation reversed for Greece in the last year, and Athens has become isolated. Greece, opposing the normalization process with Egypt, its “last fort,” is aiming to escalate tensions in the Mediterranean in efforts to gain U.S. and EU support, and sabotage the normalization diplomacy. Thus, it already launched seismic explorations within this scope in violation of Libya’s maritime zone as per the Türkiye-Libya deal. However, Ankara will not overlook this. It is stated that Türkiye’s drilling ship Abdülhamit Han, currently waiting at Taşucu Port in Mersin, will open out to the Mediterranean again in the coming days.