Are Syria and Greece on Turkey's road to Egypt?

We said that President Erdoğan's handshake with Sisi in Doha, and his opening a new page in relations with Egypt, does not require the leaders of the two countries to agree on everything. It is actually unnecessary to give long examples of this. Such is the nature of international relations. Türkiye is in a complete conflict of interests with the United States, as well as with Russia and Iran, on Syrian soil. The United States, for instance, has for years openly supported terror against Türkiye. But this does not bring it to the point of severing diplomatic relations with all these countries.

Even so, to those who ask why it came to the point of rupture with Egypt and with Sisi, must the conditions of that period be recounted at length once again?

First of all, the coup, in the conditions of that day, was not a coup that took place only within Egypt. It was an attempt in which certain international powers intervened inside Egypt, also targeting Türkiye. It was impossible for Türkiye to treat that event as an Egyptian internal affair and gloss over it. Just as it could not remain indifferent to the attempt against Qatar, with which it has a security cooperation agreement, it could not remain indifferent to that one either, and it did not.

In fact, in Qatar, the lesson drawn from the fait accompli experienced in Egypt had some effect in taking a more proactive stance and preventing developments from taking a worse course. The Gulf problem targeting Qatar today was likewise resolved, thanks to this proactive stance of Türkiye, before going to a worse point, and all the conflicting parties reconciled and came to an agreement again.

It is no secret that Türkiye has been more willing to solve problems also with Egypt, which has by now become stable in the present situation. Yet Egypt as a country needs Türkiye more, and because relations are severed, Egypt's loss is much greater. The agreements made with Greece are against the Egyptian people, for example. We said before that Egypt's maritime boundary agreement with Greece costs Egypt a loss of at least 20 thousand square kilometers. This is a great loss, and if this loss is caused by the lack of communication with Türkiye, even by hostility, Türkiye is offering Egypt an opportunity to turn back from its own harm.

Those who criticize Erdoğan emotionally over this disagreement do not even look at this policy of those who govern Egypt. While the new-page initiatives conducted at the diplomatic level for two years had reached the stage of the latest handshake in Doha, only two days ago Egypt made two important moves that were not at all compatible with the course of this rapprochement.

In the first, the spokesman of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry criticized Türkiye's operations against Syria and Iraq and said they must be stopped immediately. Why should a measure that Türkiye takes on its own border against an actual terror threat toward Türkiye concern Egypt? If it is because of being Arab, a trait shared with Syria, then in the region where Türkiye is currently operating, the lives, property and honor of the Arabs are already under attack by US, French, Russian and Iranian forces. Not a trace of the Arabs has been left. On the contrary, it is the Arabs living in the region who support Türkiye's operation the most, because to them Türkiye comes as a savior against the ethnic cleansing carried out against them for years. Then why this discomfort? Is there a non-emotional, rational justification that we are simply not understanding?

A second step is the strange agreement signed on 22 November between Greece and Egypt, one whose end ultimately points at Türkiye. The Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Search and Rescue Areas may have a defensible justification from Egypt's point of view, namely that search and rescue regions at sea, as service areas aimed at saving human life, are not considered areas of sovereignty under international law.

However, even if Egypt looks at the agreement that way, Greece does not look at it that way, and because it does not look at it that way, it never agrees to sign such an agreement with Türkiye. Greece asserts that search and rescue service areas are areas of sovereignty and links them to its maximalist maritime jurisdiction claims. For this reason, we cannot say that Egypt's signing of an agreement that Greece does not approach with Türkiye is of no concern to Türkiye.

The rules set by the 1979 Hamburg Convention on search and rescue areas place on countries the responsibility to cooperate where service areas overlap. But whose life can Greece, which in the Aegean pushes back innocent asylum seekers in violation of international law before the eyes of the world and causes their deaths, be expected to search and rescue in the Eastern Mediterranean?

Before it comes to the Hamburg Convention, Greece should have fulfilled its obligations on much more basic refugee rights. It is very clear that in such an agreement it has no priority such as search and rescue. Its only concern is to find an opportunity to repeat its claims of sovereignty limits against Türkiye. But there is no chance of proving maximalist sovereignty claims by such cheap means; it merely helplessly displays its inclination and its desires.