Turkey and Egypt are tightening their security cooperation

The protracted war throughout the Middle East – and as part of it Operation Hare’s Roar – had many effects on the countries of the region in general and on Turkey in particular, some of them very positive from Ankara’s point of view. One of them is tightening security cooperation, which until a few years ago would have seemed absurd, with Egypt. After the two armies recently concluded a joint air exercise in Egypt, in which Turkish F-16 fighter jets took part, among others, aircraft of this model from the Egyptian Air Force arrived in recent days for another exercise in the city of Konya in Turkey.

These are not the countries’ first joint exercises: in April of last year, Egypt’s special forces arrived for joint training in the Ankara area, while in September, the joint naval exercise “Friendship Seas” took place in the eastern Mediterranean. At the political level, Presidents Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Cairo in February this year.

Until recently, such an event would have seemed completely far-fetched due to two key aspects: Turkish President Erdogan is a man of the Muslim Brotherhood, and this movement poses the greatest domestic threat to Egyptian President al-Sisi. On top of that, in 2019, Ankara signed a “maritime border” agreement with Libya, which created such a border between the countries out of nowhere, at the expense of Greece and near Egypt.

However, there is now a commonality of interests, and mainly a commonality of concerns, between Ankara and Cairo. Turkey was greatly embarrassed by the situation in which its NATO partners were required to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles on its territory, and in the case of Egypt – the Houthi rebels, Iran’s emissaries in Yemen, caused severe economic damage to it due to the blockade of Bab al-Mandab.

Beyond that, Egypt’s peace agreement with Israel is strong and exists and the Egyptians operate an embassy in Tel Aviv, but the sediments between the countries still exist. Every year Egypt celebrates the holiday “October 6th”, in which it celebrates the apparent victory in the Yom Kippur War. This is one of the reasons why the significant military strengthening of Cairo in recent years arouses concern, or at least surprise, in Jerusalem, since Egypt faces no significant threats within its borders.