The contretemps are the latest in a souring relationship between
and Ankara.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose political career has been based on a quest to expand the role of Islam in his country’s relentlessly secular political system, criticized the military coup against
, the country’s first democratically elected leader.
is now in prison and facing the death penalty.
Mr. Erdogan’s ties to
and the
, the Islamist group that propelled him to power, have rankled the
since June 2013, when
chief Hakan Findan was dispatched to
to warn
of contacts between street protest organizers and the armed forces.
believes Mr. Findan relayed intelligence to
that the
was about to give the beleaguered president an ultimatum to meet popular demands or leave office. The
took power in July 2013. Soon afterward,
banned the
.
On July 12, the
spokesman said authorities had uncovered a “terrorist cell” receiving instructions from
headquarters in
whose mission was to destabilize
. Istanbul serves as the broadcast center for
groups that have called for the overthrow of Mr. el-Sisi, the spokesman said.
One of the groups, Mekamelin, or Finishing the Job, transmitted satellite television feeds to Sinai that featured Islamic extremist Hossam Alshorabagy, who regularly accuses army conscripts from Upper Egypt of raping Bedouin women while patrolling the Sinai Peninsula.
Egyptian officials also contend that Turkish weapons showed up in the hands of Ansar Beit
militants who fought Egyptian troops in the Sinai town of Sheikh Zuweid in early July. A July 15 missile strike against an Egyptian patrol boat off the Gaza coast in the Mediterranean Sea also likely used Turkish weapons, the officials said.
In those cases, the Turkish weapons probably came from Islamic State-linked militants in Libya, the Egyptian officials said, citing a United Nations report from February 2014 that detailed how Turkish munitions were flooding into that war-torn North African country.
The diplomatic rift between
and
also reflects changes in both countries’ stances toward
.
Late last month,
appointed Hazem Khairat as its first ambassador to
in three years.
recalled
’s envoy in 2012 after an Israeli attack killed a
terrorist leader.
is an offshoot of the
.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry has yet to appoint an ambassador to
.
expelled the Turkish ambassador and downgraded relations between the two countries in 2013 after Mr. Erdogan called for the release of
.
also has been sounding alarms about
’s involvement in Sinai, which local observers said stemmed from the group’s penetration of the
-controlled Gaza Strip.
“There are dozens of Turks staying in Gaza, and they are not just normal citizens or aid workers,” said Abu Suliman, 35, a Sinai Bedouin community activist.
He said he has refused Ansar Beit
militants who approached him about smuggling arms in the region. “They started to get in touch with ISIS in Sinai using Gaza as their intelligence base for
,” he said.
