Cairo denied Turkish fake news reports that it was preparing to hold talks with Turkish officials aimed at restarting relations between Egypt and Turkey.
A high-ranking diplomatic source from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry told Russian news agency TASS that neither the meetings nor their preparations are being discussed.
“No contact or preparation of meetings with Turkey – direct or indirect – is taking place,” the senior diplomatic source said, stressing that any statements by Turkey must be confirmed by real action.
“This is not the first time that Ankara has made statements to resume contacts with Cairo,” the source continued.
“But these are just attempts to break out of political isolation in the region,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry source said.
“The ideological nature of Turkey’s foreign policy, which speaks of the Ottoman heritage in Libya, the doctrine of the “Blue Homeland” and the fact that they do not hide their ambitions, is a cause for concern,” said a senior diplomat in Cairo.
As another source in the Egyptian Foreign Ministry told TASS:
“For Cairo, real steps are important, not just the words from Ankara, and Turkey must prove its good intentions and stop interfering in the internal affairs of Egypt,
and then possibly Egypt’s attitude will change.”
“At the moment there is no need to jump to conclusions,” the source said.
Among other things, Al-Arabiya television channel, citing its own sources, broadcasted on Friday that Ankara and Cairo had telephone conversations, during which the two sides discussed the upcoming meeting in Cairo.
At the same time, according to the same television network, Egypt set as a condition for the resumption of talks – Ankara to stop “escalating the situation in the Mediterranean”.
On Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu made statements on the resumption of contacts between Ankara and Cairo at the diplomatic level.
“Relations broke down many years ago and therefore it is not possible to restore them in one day as if nothing had happened,” said the head of Turkish diplomacy.
“That is why it is important to have successive meetings, to define a road map and to start from it,” he said in an interview with Anadolu Agency.
“We have contacts with Egypt, between the secret services and at the level of Foreign Ministries. We also started contacts at the diplomatic level,” the Turkish Foreign Minister added.
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