The personal relationships that leaders establish among themselves usually play an important role in shaping the relationships between their countries;

In fact, it sometimes has a decisive role in determining the course of these relationships and whether they are good or bad.

In the cases of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the impact of this factor on the relations of the two countries is clearly visible.

When King Salman bin Abdulaziz took over the leadership of the Kingdom in 2015, a distinguished relationship developed between him and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and it played an important role in pushing the two countries to adopt similar approaches to major regional issues such as Yemen and the Iranian role in the region.

Although Erdogan sought to establish a good relationship with the young prince when they met in the Saudi city of Jeddah, about a month and a half after the outbreak of the Gulf crisis, the matter seemed difficult, especially with Riyadh sticking to its demands regarding Qatar, in addition to the close partnership that Prince bin Salman established with Crown Prince Abu Abu Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed

After Saudi Arabia launched Operation Decisive Storm against the Houthis in Yemen in March of the same year, Turkey expressed its support for the operation and strongly criticized Iran's role in the region.

Months later, Erdogan received King Salman in Ankara and awarded him the Order of the Republic, describing him as a guarantee of stability and security in the region.

Before that, Ankara and Riyadh were on the same line regarding the Syrian conflict, and they provided various types of support to the Syrian opposition, although that period was not without differences in the two countries' positions regarding the Arab Spring and the rise of political Islam.

But this stable trend in relations began to shift in mid-2017, when Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a blockade on Qatar and imposed conditions on it to end the crisis, including the closure of the Turkish military base in Qatar.

The remarkable Saudi shift at the time towards adopting an anti-Turkey discourse and its regional role was driven by a number of factors, foremost of which was the rise of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Although Erdogan sought to establish a good relationship with the young prince when they met in the Saudi city of Jeddah, about a month and a half after the outbreak of the Gulf crisis, the matter seemed difficult, especially with Riyadh sticking to its demands regarding Qatar, in addition to the close partnership that Prince bin Salman established with Crown Prince Abu Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, which contributed to pushing Riyadh to engage in a regional alliance with Abu Dhabi and Cairo to counter the current of political Islam and try to weaken the influence of Turkey, which grew in the region after the Arab Spring.

In the three capitals, Ankara's good relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood was seen as a threat to the stability of regimes in countries opposed to the Arab Spring.

Despite that, the dispute between Turkey and Saudi Arabia over their approach to the regional situation remained sharply hidden - as is the case with both Egypt and the UAE - until the crisis of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in his country's consulate in Istanbul in 2018, turning the dispute into a rivalry that emerged in the form of sharp criticism. In the Saudi media, Turkey, its regional role, and the unofficial Saudi boycott of Turkish goods.

For its part, Ankara has abandoned its conservative tone towards Saudi Arabia.

However, Erdogan has sought to isolate his personal relationship with King Salman from this dispute.

At the beginning of the Gulf crisis, Erdogan described King Salman as "the chief of the Gulf." He also maintained constant telephone contact with the Saudi monarch, hoping to leave room for an end to the crisis.

In addition to the Gulf crisis and the Khashoggi case, the prevailing regional and international factors at that period were not conducive to the restoration of Turkish-Saudi relations.

The fact that Saudi policies are in harmony with the UAE and Egypt regarding Turkey and the negative role played by the administration of former US President Donald Trump in fueling the Gulf crisis and Turkish-Arab differences in particular complicated the crisis between Ankara and Riyadh.

But the dramatic transformations that emerged in the region early last year created a new path in Turkish-Arab relations after nearly a decade of intense competition to reshape the regional situation.

In May 2021, Ankara entered into negotiations to reform relations with Egypt, followed by the conclusion of a reconciliation with the UAE, which culminated in the visit of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed to Ankara at the end of last year.

Last March, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan received his Israeli counterpart, Isaac Herzog, declaring the opening of a new page in relations with Israel.

Turkey pursued a strategy of dividing disputes with its regional opponents, which helped it prepare the ground for the stage of reconciliation with Saudi Arabia.

On April 28, Erdogan paid a visit to the Kingdom, which opened new horizons in the relations of the two countries.

Weeks before the visit, a Turkish court suspended legal proceedings against 26 Saudis suspected of involvement in the Khashoggi murder, and referred the case to Saudi Arabia.

It is widely believed that the move was a prerequisite for Saudi Arabia to begin mending relations.

Many attribute Turkey's turn towards reforming its relations with its former regional rivals - including Saudi Arabia - to Erdogan's need to improve economic relations with the Gulf states in order to face the difficulties his country is experiencing as it approaches crucial presidential and parliamentary elections next year.

This explanation seems logical in view of the importance of Turkey's trade and economic cooperation with the Gulf states, taking into account that the same economic factor formed an incentive for the UAE and Saudi Arabia to end the crisis with Turkey, as both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi consider the important position that Turkey is gaining at the level of New trade routes and global energy supplies, as well as being a promising market for investments.

Similar to the reconciliation process with the UAE, the economy is a gateway to Turkish reconciliation with Saudi Arabia, where the initial Saudi response appeared in the form of economic temptations with the Kingdom's intention to intensify its purchases of Turkish goods and restore Turkish exports to it to normal once the two countries announced the improvement of relations after they declined sharply during the years of the crisis.

Moreover, the challenges posed by the Corona virus on the economies of the region are prompting their countries - including Turkey and Saudi Arabia - to refocus their external priorities to recover from the repercussions of the epidemic.

However, the economic factor alone does not seem sufficient to explain the ongoing transformations in Turkish-Arab and Turkish-Gulf relations in particular.

In addition to the economic benefits that the two parties aspire to from the reform of relations, a number of other important and decisive factors emerge that prompted Ankara and Riyadh - as well as Ankara and Abu Dhabi - to make a fundamental shift in relations from antagonism towards cooperation, and they can be summarized in 3 main factors, in the following :

First: de-escalation of the region

Early last year, the regional polarization that the region experienced for about a decade began to diminish as the countries of the region tended to reduce escalation and reorient their foreign policies.

Turkey's shift towards reducing its regional differences, in addition to ending the Gulf crisis and the transitional phase agreement in Libya, which was one of the arenas of regional competition by proxy, motivated Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt to explore ways to end the rivalry phase.

Moreover, these parties have reached the conviction that the competition between them over 10 years did not lead to a fundamental change in the regional situation in favor of any of them as much as it constituted a drain on the opportunities for cooperation between them to address regional crises that negatively affected their interests.

This attrition has also helped other rival powers such as Iran in strengthening its regional role.

Second: The transformation of US policy in the region after Biden took power

Given that the transformation that occurred in US policy in the region after President Joe Biden took office, raised a common concern among Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE about Biden's hard policies towards it compared to Trump, and its tendency to reduce its involvement in regional issues to focus on other challenges posed by China and Russia, This constituted an additional incentive for the regional actors to end their differences and try to reach an understanding on how to manage the regional situation in the post-American role.

The aspects of the regional transformations resulting from the American transformation can be read as a hedging method for these forces in order to quickly adapt to its repercussions on the regional situation.

Moreover, the need of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to search for other alternatives to meet their security needs pushes them to pay attention to the emerging Turkish defense industries, which have shown great efficiency in changing the course of many conflicts such as Syria, Libya and the South Caucasus.

In addition, Turkey's membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the importance that the West attaches to it in balancing the Russian role in many areas increases its strategic importance for the countries of the region.

Third: The decline of the Turkish commitment to support the current political Islam in the region

This support after the outbreak of the Arab Spring was the basis for the emergence of differences between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE.

As Ankara embarked on negotiations to end its estrangement with Cairo, the Turkish shift toward the Muslim Brotherhood began to emerge with restrictions imposed on the group's media outlets in Turkey.

The setback that the Brotherhood suffered after the overthrow of the late President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, and then its decline in other countries, played a major role in pushing Ankara to focus on restoring its traditional relations with Arab forces opposed to political Islam.

Although Turkey sought to market its relations with the Muslim Brotherhood out of support for the Arab transformations that resulted from the ballot boxes in a number of Arab countries, after years it reached a conviction that the harms of adhering to this approach outweigh its benefits, especially after the anti-political movement demonstrated its ability to change the course of The region after the Arab Spring.

Restoration of trust

Erdogan's visit to Saudi Arabia contributes to preparing the ground for opening a new page in relations. However, removing the residue resulting from the Khashoggi crisis requires more effort to restore trust between the Saudi and Turkish leaderships.

Currently, the results of the visit are expected to emerge in the end of the unofficial Saudi ban on Turkish goods and the resumption of Turkish companies' business in Saudi Arabia, as well as the possible rapprochement in the field of trade.

But developing this openness into political cooperation hinges on both Ankara and Riyadh's assessment of the gradual progress being made.