As recent as 2019, a meeting with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sissi would have been out of question for for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In his view, el-Sissi simply was "a murderer."

But those days of hostile rhetoric are over. On September 4, Egypt's el-Sissi will be received in Ankara for the very first time.

Diplomatic ties between the two countries had plummeted in 2013, after Egypt's democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood faction was ousted in a military coup by then-Minister of Defense, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. El-Sissi became president in 2014.

The ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood though has also shaped Erdogan's policies. He has often used the Muslim Brotherhood's Rabaa hand gesture ever since the beginning of the protests on Cairo's Tahrir Square in 2013.

Ahead of the 2019 Turkish local elections, Erdogan linked his party's political opponent to the el-Sissi government: "Will we vote for (our candidate) Binali Yildirim or el-Sissi?" he then asked.

But then, relations began to........

© Deutsche Welle