Turkish FM to visit Cairo amid normalisation efforts

Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, is set to pay a one-day visit to Egypt on Saturday in a bid to mend ties between Ankara and Cairo, a statement from the foreign ministry said.

"Upon the invitation of Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, our minister will pay an official visit to Egypt on March 18," the statement said on Friday.

The two ministers will review ties between both countries and discuss regional and international developments, the statement added.

Cavusoglu's visit will mark the first such visit by a high Turkish official to Egypt in the last decade.

It comes a few weeks after Shoukry visited Turkey to express support and solidarity following the deadly 6 February earthquakes, that killed more than 48,000 people.

The two ministers held a meeting at Adana Airport and discussed the road map for the normalisation and exchange of high-level visits.

In 2013, Ankara and Cairo severed diplomatic ties after the overthrow of the government of Mohammed Morsi, with whom Recep Tayyip Erdogan had good relations.

Since then, ties between Turkey and Egypt have been carried out at the lower level of charge d'affaires. Efforts to normalise ties were launched in 2021 but they did not improve at the desired pace.