Egyptian authorities will prevent Islamist Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan from traveling through Egypt on a trip to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, the Tower reports:
The development is the result of multiple Middle East dynamics. The Egyptian military has long been locked in a kind of media cold war with the Palestinian terror group. Egyptian authorities blame Hamas for violence in the country stretching back to the 2011 Arab Spring, and more recently for a series of spectacular attacks against Egyptian troops and infrastructure in the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt’s interim government, which took over last month after the Egyptian military stripped then-president Mohammed Morsi of power, has also been directly at odds with the Erdogan government in Turkey, which had been an early and strong supporter of Morsi. Ankara initially reacted to Morsi’s removal with outrage.
