Erdogan shakes hands with Egypt’s Sisi whom he calls a “dictator”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shook hands with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in Qatar on Sunday, whom he frequently calls a “dictator”, “putschist” and “murderer”.

Attending a reception hosted by Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in capital Doha on the sidelines of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Erdogan held a brief talk with al-Sisi, marking a first meeting since 2013 which the Egyptian president took power by a military coup.

The relations between Ankara and Cairo have broke down after Sisi ousted Egypt’s former president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood via a military coup in 2013 and launched a crackdown on the group that Erdogan backs politically.

Erdogan who had forged close relations with Morsi, frequently denounced Sisi as a dictator and Turkey under Erdogan became a safe haven for the exiled members of the brotherhood that Cairo designated as a terrorist organization.

In an interview with CNN Turk in 2014, Erdogan called Sisi a tyrant. “He is right now a tyrant, I don't have any doubts about that," he said.

In an interview with al-Jazeera in 2016, Erdogan called the Egyptian president a "putschist", killing his own people.

Following the execution of nine people in Egypt in 2019 who were sentenced for the murder of the Egyptian prosecutor general in 2015, Erdogan said he refuses to talk to "someone like him [Sisi]".

"Of course, we are going to be told that it is a decision of the judiciary, but there, justice, elections, all that, are codswallop. There is an authoritarian system, even totalitarian," Erdogan said.