A government whistleblower who tweets under the pseudonym Fuat Avni has alleged that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan apologized to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi during a secret meeting in Saudi Arabia earlier this month.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’ met with king Salman of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh on March 2, only one day after Sisi’s visit, prompting speculation that Saudi Arabia played a mediating role between Turkey and Egypt with the aim of repairing relations between the two countries, which have been at odds for several years.
Erdoğan has been one of the leading critics of Sisi, Egypt’s former military head, ever since he came to power after removing former President Mohamed Morsi — the country’s first democratically elected and a member of the MB — via a military coup in July 2013. President Erdoğan has also accused the international community of hypocrisy for giving legitimacy to Sisi and not taking a stand against him after the coup in Egypt.
Fuat Avni tweeted on Friday night that Erdoğan had sent three mediators to Sisi to mend ties and the Egyptian president was convinced to meet with Erdoğan after new Saudi king interfered in the issue. “Yezid and Sisi met in the presence of the Saudi king in Saudi Arabia. Yezid apologized to Sisi,” the Twitter whistleblower claimed.
Fuat Avni refers to Erdoğan as Yezid, which is a reference to the Umayyad caliph, who according to Islamic belief allowed his opponent Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, to die of thirst in the Battle of Karbala.
The whistleblower also claimed that Erdoğan “begged” Sisi and Salman not to disclose the secret meeting. He also alleged that the president told his inner circle that he would even meet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.