Turkiye’s relations with Egypt and Syria could be reset after elections: Recep Tayyip Erdogan said
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday said Turkey could open a new page with Egypt and Syria following the presidential and parliamentary elections next year.
Erdogan said there was no eternal antagonism in politics and that Ankara could renew ties with these countries when the time is appropriate.
“We may reevaluate the relations with the countries we have problems with,” he told the reporters who accompanied him to Indonesia for the G20 summit earlier this week.
“We can reset the relations with them after the June elections.”
Domestic pressure is growing on Ankara to warm relations with Damascus. The Turkish opposition’s calls for reconciliation between Turkey and Syria are increasing, as the public grows more and more hostile to the nearly four million Syrian refugees in the country.
The Syrian government became an international pariah when it violently cracked down on protests in 2011, sparking sparked a civil war that is believed to have cost half a million lives.
Meanwhile, Ankara and Cairo have been seeking to mend relations that were fractured after Turkey refused to recognise Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as Egypt’s legitimate leader following a 2013 military coup that ousted his predecessor Mohamed Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected president.
Turkiye’s relations with Egypt and Syria could be reset after elections: Erdogan said
Erdogan, however, still refuses to meet Sisi, which is a primary condition for Cairo to repair relations.
