The Middle East’s most pointless feud — and that is a very crowded field — is finally over. After a 10-year diplomatic freeze, Turkey and Egypt are finally exchanging ambassadors. Having led their countries through a decade of political repression and economic pain, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Egyptian leader General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi are hoping the resumption of normal relations will yield dividends.
But these are unlikely to make up for the opportunity cost of the years the two men have wasted in mulish mutual antagonism. Over the same period, Erdogan and Sisi turned their countries into the proverbial sick men of the Middle East, each desperately in need of an economic crutch.
It may seem as though Erdogan is riding high off the NATO summit, where he parlayed Turkey’s veto power to extract some concessions from Sweden and won praise — and possibly a fleet of F-16s — from President Joe Biden. Sisi, too, has enjoyed Biden’s good graces, despite the Egyptian regime’s appalling human-rights record. But both men face enormous economic problems at home, and the resumption of ties between their countries is a timely reminder of the chances they have missed.
Under other circumstances, and other leaders, Turkey and Egypt might have forged a formidable partnership: The former boasting of the region’s most diverse and sophisticated economy, and the latter the largest market and labor pool. That, in any event, was the hope in 2012, when Erdogan agreed to furnish Egypt, then led by President Mohammed Morsi, a $1 billion loan — the first, it was hoped, of many. When they met in Ankara that fall, there was much talk of shared economic interests and the promise of an upgraded free-trade agreement. Zafer Caglayan, then Turkey’s economy minister, pledged that bilateral trade would double to $10 billion in no time.
But within a few months, Sisi had ousted Morsi in a coup. Erdogan, whose AK Party shared the ideology of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, denounced the general as an “illegitimate tyrant.” Sisi, who regarded the Brotherhood as an existential threat, resented Erdogan for giving sanctuary to the group’s leaders and other opposition figures. Cairo declared the Turkish ambassador persona non grata and Ankara responded in kind.
Over the next decade, the two leaders found themselves at loggerheads in many of the region’s conflicts. In 2017, Egypt joined Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in cutting diplomatic ties with Qatar, Turkey’s closest ally in the Gulf region. In early 2020, Erdogan sent Turkish troops to Libya in support of the government in Tripoli, which was threatened by a rebel general, Khalifa Haftar, backed by Egypt. Later that year, Egypt joined with Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority to set up the EastMed Gas Forum, conspicuously excluding Turkey.
Trade between the two nations did grow throughout the last decade, but much more slowly than had been envisioned when Erdogan and Morsi had posed for the photo-op in Ankara. A spurt in Turkey’s imports of Egyptian natural gas last year, after relations had begun to improve, helped push bilateral trade to $7.76 billion.
But whereas a Turkish-Egyptian partnership might have challenged the Gulf Arab petrostates as the dominant economic and political core of the Middle East and North Africa, both countries are now heavily in hock to the sheikdoms. Having hobbled Turkey’s economy by pursuing eccentric monetary policies, Erdogan has had to drop his hauteur toward the Gulf states and instead seek succor from the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. He will be returning to these countries soon, with a large hat in his hand.
From Cairo, Sisi will be watching with envy, having already overdrawn his credit with the petrostates in a vain attempt to paper over the widening cracks of an economy where runaway inflation is wreaking havoc on households as the government struggles with a shortage of foreign currency. Egypt has been forced to seek credit lines from China and India, on less generous terms than it once got from the Gulf.
Turkey and Egypt are also bending over backward to attract investors from the Gulf states, rather from each other. Emirati companies just picked up some bargains in the sale of Egyptian state assets. Erdogan and Morsi had envisioned companies from their respective countries collaborating across the global south, but there have been few joint ventures of scale. Turkey’s construction companies have for the most part missed out on building the new administrative capital Sisi is raising outside Cairo. Egypt’s military-industrial complex has not benefited from the innovation of Turkey’s defense manufacturers.
Other opportunities may yet arise as relations between the two countries continue to mend. There’s obviously great potential for cooperation in the exploitation of hydrocarbons in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially if Sisi can help resolve grievances between Turkey and other littoral states. It is conceivable that Turkish companies might bid for the military-owned Egyptian firms Sisi has promised to sell.
But the promise that a strong Turkish-Egyptian partnership once held such now seems lost to the realm of could-have-beens. Ankara and Cairo could have balanced the clout of the petrostates in the Arab world; they could have drawn other regional actors — Iraq and Libya come immediately to mind — into an economic bloc; they could have helped each other become more competitive against the world powers in Africa; indeed, they could have been bigger players in the geopolitics of the global south.
Alas, it will be a long time, if ever, before the two countries make up for the 10 years lost to the bloody-mindedness of their leaders.
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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Bobby Ghosh is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering foreign affairs. Previously, he was editor in chief at Hindustan Times, managing editor at Quartz and international editor at Time.
