Egypt puts burden on Turkey to open talks
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has toned down his rhetoric on Egypt in light of the tensions between the two countries, against the backdrop of the recent development in the eastern Mediterranean and Libya.
CAIRO — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has recently toned down his rhethoric on Egypt. In a press statement on Sept. 18, carried by Al-Arabiya website, he was quoted saying, “We have no objection to holding meetings with the Egyptian authorities.”
He continued, “Holding intelligence meetings with Egypt is a different matter, and it is possible, but the agreement they made with Greece saddened us.”
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias had signed Aug. 6 an agreement in Cairo designating the exclusive economic zone between Egypt and Greece in the eastern Mediterranean. This zone contains promising oil and gas reserves.
Meanwhile, in a statement on the same day, Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs vehemently denounced the agreement as “null and void” for violating the Libyan maritime borders. The statement said the area delimited by the Greek-Egyptian agreement infringes on Turkey's continental shelf.
