Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has extended an invitation to his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, to pay an official visit to Türkiye.
The invitation follows a meeting between Erdoğan and al-Sisi on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in New Delhi, India, on Sunday.
Answering journalists’ questions about the meeting with al-Sisi on the way back to Türkiye, Erdoğan said, “The meeting was very positive. We tasked our foreign ministers and intelligence chiefs. They will negotiate with each other. They were waiting for us first, but I said, ‘We are waiting for you’. No date is given.”
Erdoğan announced that ministers and heads of intelligence from both nations will convene to determine the precise date of the visit. He emphasized that both countries possess significant economic and commercial potential.
“We will work to double our mutual trade volume,” he underscored. “Making our relations better than before can enable us to achieve positive results in many regional problem areas, especially the Syrian issue.”
The two leaders discussed bilateral ties and energy cooperation between Türkiye and Egypt, as well as regional and global issues.
Egypt and Türkiye upgraded their diplomatic relations by appointing ambassadors to each other’s capitals in July after a decade of tension.
The appointment of ambassadors marked a “new era” between Ankara and Cairo, Erdoğan told Sisi during their meeting, according to the Turkish presidency’s statement.
The two nations’ relations broke down in 2013 after Egypt’s then-army chief Sisi led the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi, an ally of Ankara.
Erdoğan also told Sisi that Türkiye attaches importance to reviving cooperation with Egypt in the fields of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and nuclear energy.
By Breaking News Turkey with agencies