The leaders of Egypt and Turkey will meet later this month, capping the normalisation of relations between the two regional powerhouses after a decade fraught with tension and distrust.
Officials confirmed Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet in Turkey after the Egyptian leader attends a Russia-Africa meeting in St Petersburg on July 27-28.
The two leaders met in Qatar in November on the sidelines of the World Cup, an encounter that gave a significant boost to months of exploratory, low-level talks between the two nations on normalising relations.
The Qatar meeting was also the first between the two leaders since Mr El Sisi took office in 2014.
The pair have spoken on the phone at least twice since then.
News of the meeting came less than a week after the two nations restored full diplomatic relations and named ambassadors to each other’s capitals.
Relations between Ankara and Cairo became tense in 2013 when Egypt’s military, at the time led by Mr El Sisi, removed the country's president, Mohamed Morsi, a member of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood. Mr Morsi enjoyed the support of Turkey.
The two countries withdrew their ambassadors soon after, with accusations from Cairo that Turkey was supporting militant Islamist groups in the region and interfering in the domestic affairs of Arab nations.
Trade between the two countries never reflected the tension, growing at a steady pace to stand at nearly $10 billion last year.
Deepening the rift, the two nations have backed rival sides in the conflict in Libya, Egypt's neighbour to the west, which has been torn by more than 10 years of civil strife.
Egypt is also opposed to what it views as Turkey's meddling in neighbouring Syria and Iraq, and its attempts to muscle in on plans by Cairo and its allies to turn the East Mediterranean, where vast natural gas reserves have been found, into a regional energy hub.
Ankara's first step was to shut down Turkish-based television channels run by the Muslim Brotherhood which launched daily attacks on Mr El Sisi and his policies. It has also asked several Muslim Brotherhood leaders to leave the country. Egypt declared the organisation a terrorist group in 2013.
Plans are under way, according to Egyptian officials, for Turkey to extradite Muslim Brotherhood members convicted in absentia in Egypt on terror charges, or on its wanted list.
These include midlevel leaders and members of Hasm, a violent offshoot that emerged after Mr Morsi's removal and is blamed for a series of attacks on army and police officers, said the officials.
The Egyptian-Turkish rapprochement is part of a larger recalibration of the political landscape in the Middle East, including the restoration of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, as well as Egypt's normalisation of relations with Tehran.
