First time in decade, Egypt FM to visit Turkey, Syria for ‘solidarity’
Egypt`s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry will head to Turkey and Syria Monday morning, his workplace said, for the primary such go to in a decade of aggravating family members with each international locations. The journey targets to show “harmony with the 2 international locations and their brotherly peoples” after the devastating earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey in advance this month, a overseas ministry declaration said. Shoukry’s go to is the cutting-edge instance of Arab outreach to the across the world remoted Syrian government.
The 7.8-value quake that struck on February 6 killed extra than 46,000 human beings in each international locations. On February 7, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi known as his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, withinside the first professional trade among the 2 leaders. Shoukry additionally spoke together along with his Syrian counterpart.
The equal day, Sisi spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in one in all their first diplomatic contacts beneathneath a current rapprochement. A collection of aircraft and army shipments of “masses of tonnes of clinical resource” followed, in line with the Egyptian authorities, alongside with “a technical team” assisting rescue operations with the White Helmets in northwest Syria, the civilian organization said.
Assad has been politically remoted withinside the location for the reason that begin of the 12-12 months strugglefare in Syria. While Cairo and Damascus have in large part maintained family members for the duration of the conflict, the Cairo-primarily based totally Arab League suspended Syria in 2011 and a few different Arab international locations have severed ties with it.
Since the lethal quake, however, the Syrian president has acquired calls and resource from Arab leaders, a momentum analysts say he may want to leverage to reinforce local support. On Sunday, a delegation of Arab parliamentary leaders met with Assad in Damascus, consisting of the speaker of Egypt’s parliament, Hanafy al-Gebali. Egyptian country media defined him as “the maximum senior Egyptian professional to go to Damascus” in over a decade.
Egypt’s professional role on Syria has known as for “a political solution”, guidance clean of discussing the destiny of Assad himself, whose departure has lengthy been demanded with the aid of using numerous Arab leaders. Syria’s National Security Bureau leader Ali Mamlouk met his Egyptian counterpart in Cairo in 2016 and once more in 2018.
Cairo’s family members with Ankara were frosty given that a 2013 coup that propelled Sisi to power, deposing Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and outlawing his Muslim Brotherhood, many participants of which had sought safe haven in Turkey. In November, Sisi and Erdogan shook arms in Qatar, in what the Egyptian presidency heralded as a brand new starting of their ties.
