Egypt and Turkey ... different paths, do they cool the Mediterranean water or ignite it?
Egypt and Turkey ... political hostility that steals the spotlight from growing economic cooperation
Those who follow the media may think that there is a strong hostility between Egypt and Turkey, while the reality of the matter combines simultaneously between the contradictions of politics and the facts of cooperation, especially in the commercial field.
With a closer look, the relationship between the two countries appears to be going on two separate tracks. One is bullish, the trade track, which has imposed itself strongly for the interests of both sides, and the other is bearish, the political track that has been covered by tension since the July 2013 coup in Egypt, and then made worse by the impact of the conflict in Libya.
After years of campaigns in the Egyptian media targeting Turkey and its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it came to an Egyptian threat to intervene militarily in Libya to stop the progress of the legitimate government forces supported by Turkey in order to recover Sirte and Al-Jafra from the forces of retired Major General Khalifa Hifter, who is supported by Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.
The Egyptian campaigns against Turkey went so far that Egyptian media and even religious circles violated a general trend in most Islamic countries by welcoming the move to return the Hagia Sophia Museum to a mosque, and Egyptian media went out to criticize this step.
But what the media does not talk about, that trade and economic cooperation go well between the two countries, as well as other aspects that were not affected by the tension of political relations, such as the movement of tourism between the two countries that never stopped, as the number of passenger flights between Egypt and Turkey increased 20 percent in 2018 According to Turkish Airlines.
As for the file related to the conflict in the eastern Mediterranean region, which contains huge reserves of gas and oil, it is located in a gray area located between the economy and politics, due to the lack of resolution of the demarcation of the maritime borders between the countries of that region.
Since 2014, Egypt has joined the Eastern Mediterranean Alliance, which included Israel, Greece and Cyprus, with the aim of demarcating the borders between them, blocking the road to Turkey and not allowing it to be present in the Eastern Mediterranean region despite its control over that region for decades.
Despite this, data from the Turkish Statistical Institute showed that Turkish exports to Egypt increased to about $ 3.3 billion in 2019, recording a steady increase from previous years, while the volume of Egyptian exports to Turkey in 2018 reached about $ 2.2 billion.
Manage files randomly
The Egyptian economist and businessman, Mohamed Rizk, believes that "the media exchange between Egypt and Turkey is for local consumption only," noting that "Turkey is a large trading partner for Egypt and has direct investments of reasonable size inside Egypt."
In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, he affirmed that Turkey is a commercial partner that Egypt cannot sacrifice at least for the time being due to economic considerations and many advantages, pointing out that politics and economy are compared to a clear randomness by the current regime in Egypt.
Observers say that the exclusion of Turkey, one of the major countries in the Eastern Mediterranean region by countries such as Cyprus or Greece in cooperation with Egypt and Israel, is like trying to ignore a large and old family within its sphere of influence, which is never correct.
This is what Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşo أوlu indicated, in which he confirmed in press statements that the most rational way to restore Turkish-Egyptian relations is through dialogue and cooperation with Turkey rather than ignoring it.
So does the recentoglu statements, in which he indicated that his country exchanges views - at the expert level - with Egypt regarding the Memorandum of Understanding to demarcate the maritime borders with Libya, a pause in order for Egypt to rethink the issue of demarcating the borders in the Mediterranean?
Catching in murky waters
On the other hand, Greece, which bases its conception of the demarcation of maritime borders with Egypt to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (not signed by Turkey) from its maritime borders from its farthest island that is not recognized by Ankara such as Kastelorizo, Rhodes, Karpathos, and Crete, on Take advantage of the Turkish-Egyptian dispute to demarcate the sea border with it.
The Foreign Ministers of Egypt and Greece held talks in Cairo last month, which concluded by noting that, on the sidelines of the twelfth round of technical negotiations between the two countries on the issue of delimiting the maritime borders between Egypt and Greece, without an agreement in this regard.
Turkey signed an agreement with the internationally recognized government in Libya last November on the maritime borders in the Mediterranean, amid an Egyptian-Greek Cypriot refusal, although the Egyptian Foreign Ministry had made it clear in the beginning that the agreement did not harm Egypt, but the presidency apparently intervened to amend The statement described the agreement as "illegal and has no effect on the system of delineating the maritime borders in the Eastern Mediterranean Region."
Egyptian academics have criticized Egypt’s neglect of its wealth by demarcating the borders with countries such as Cyprus and Greece, and the lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nile El Shafei, said that the demarcation of the borders with Greece means "Egypt ceding a large water tape in favor of Athens."
He confirmed that the fields of the Israeli Vyathan and the Cypriot Aphrodite discovered between 2010 and 2011 are within the exclusive Egyptian economic waters, and that they are located at the southern foot of the submerged Mount Eratosthenes, whose ancient maps speak of his Egyptian 2200 years ago.
The former Egyptian parliamentarian and member of the board of directors of the Petroleum Gas Company, Eng. Mustafa Mohamed, expected no agreement with Turkey regarding the demarcation of the maritime borders with Libya, saying: “The current system is excessive in the Egyptian islands of Tiran and Sanafir for the benefit of Saudi Arabia, and in the marine gas fields that are located in the exclusive economic waters In favor of Israel. "
He revealed in statements to Al-Jazeera Net that the demarcation of the maritime borders with Athens according to the Greek vision would result in great losses for Egypt, while demarcating it with Turkey would achieve great gains by granting it wider maritime spaces in areas rich in natural resources.
Pointing out that the demarcation of the maritime borders in accordance with the Greek vision helps to facilitate the establishment of the marine gas pipeline between Israel, Cyprus and Greece, which ignores and deprives Egypt of benefiting from the passage of the gas pipeline through its territorial waters and thus depriving it of fees to cross the giant line to Europe.
Multitrack policy
For his part; Turkish economist and member of the Turkish Businessmen Association Yusuf Kateboglu said, "It is parallel to the hostility that is reflected in the media statements from here and there, but other non-political paths are progressing steadily, such as trade, investment and tourism relations, because Turkey follows the policy of multi-track between countries, and has proven its effectiveness Despite the faltering political track. "
Regarding the demarcation of the maritime borders, Ihsanoglu described Egypt's policy as "floundering" and asserted in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net that Turkey is keen when demarcating the maritime borders with its neighbors to guarantee the rights of others, including Egypt, which was clear when it demarcated the borders with Libya, as this agreement restores Egypt About 50 thousand square kilometers of Mediterranean water had overdone them.
Ihsanoglu expected that this would reflect positively on political relations, as the Egyptian foreign minister stated that drawing the Turkish-Libyan borders does not harm Egypt, but under political pressure, these words were later retracted, noting that Egypt's demarcation of its borders with Cyprus and Greece wasted the rights of the Egyptian people in their wealth in the sea. The average.