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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is welcomed by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at Cairo airport on February 14, 2024. (Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Turkish Presidential Press Office/Handout via Reuters)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made his first visit to Egypt this Wednesday since 2012.

Live media broadcasts showed Erdogan disembarking from his plane in Cairo with the first lady and being greeted by Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. According to a spokesman for the Egyptian presidency, Erdogan should discuss the situation in Gaza with Sisi – including a possible ceasefire and aid deliveries.

Crack in Turkey-Egypt relations: Diplomatic relations between the two predominantly Muslim countries of the Mediterranean Sea reached a low point after Egypt’s current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi led a military coup to oust the country’s first democratically elected government, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Erdogan, whose conservative religious government had close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, was outraged when he was ousted in 2014 and called Sisi an “illegitimate dictator.”

As Turkey continued to support the Brotherhood in Egypt and throughout the region, relations continued to deteriorate. Egypt was also part of the years-long blockade of Qatar led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, while Turkey supported Doha. To Ankara’s dismay, Egypt signed a maritime agreement in 2020 with Greece, Turkey’s main rival in the eastern Mediterranean.

Reduction in diplomatic tension: Only in 2021, after the end of the diplomatic crisis, relations between Ankara and Cairo began to improve. Despite strained political relations, trade has more than doubled since the Egypt-Turkey Free Trade Agreement came into force in 2007.

Murat Aslan, professor of international politics at Hasan Kalyanku University, says Erdogan’s visit marks a turning point in relations between the two countries.

“The region needs cooperation, not confrontation,” he told CNN.