CAIRO, Egypt — Egypt hosted the leaders of Turkey and Iran for a summit of eight Muslim-majority countries on Thursday, against a backdrop of regional turmoil including the conflict in Gaza and unrest in Syria.
The gathering of the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, also known as the Developing-8, also includes Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia.
A special session on Gaza and Lebanon will be held and will be attended by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The summit was also to see Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian meeting for the first time since Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad was ousted earlier this month.
Turkey has historically backed the opposition to Assad, while Iran supported his rule.
Pezeshkian, who arrived in Cairo on Wednesday, is the first Iranian president to visit Egypt since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who visited in 2013.
Ahead of his departure from Tehran, he said the summit was an opportunity for Muslim countries to “bring our views closer together and this can have a huge effect on the regional diplomacy and interactions.”
Relations between Egypt and Iran have been strained for decades, but diplomatic contacts have intensified since Cairo became a mediator in the war in Gaza which was started by the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas on October 7, 2023, when it led a devastating cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 hostages taken to Gaza. Egypt, along with the US and Qatar, has acted as a mediator in efforts to reach a deal for a ceasefire and the release of the 100 remaining hostages.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi visited Egypt in October, while his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty traveled to Tehran in July to attend Pezeshkian’s inauguration.
Ahead of the summit, the Iranian top diplomat said he hoped it would “send a strong message to the world that the Israeli aggressions and violations in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria” would end “immediately.”
Turkey’s Erdogan, who was in Egypt earlier this year, will also attend, according to the Turkish presidency.
Erdogan will hold discussions with the summit leaders on trade as well as Gaza and Lebanon, which saw a yearlong war initiated by Iran-backed Hezbollah against Israel apparently end with a fragile ceasefire signed November 27. Hezbollah launched hostilities the day after the Hamas assault by attacking along the Israeli-Lebanon border in support of Hamas, but by the time the truce was reached, the terror group had been badly battered, its leadership decimated and weapons stockpiles greatly reduced.
In February, Erdogan was in Egypt, where he and President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi discussed economic cooperation as well as regional conflicts.
Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are all avowedly committed to Israel’s destruction. Egypt has had a peace treaty with Israel since 1979.
Erdogan, an outspoken backer of Hamas, has said that the Palestinian group is not a terrorist organization but a resistance group and has been a harsh critic of Israel throughout the Gaza war. In May, he ended the two countries’ robust economic ties.
The overthrow of the Assad regime by Turkey-backed Islamist rebels prompted Israel to send troops into a UN-mandated buffer zone between itself and Syria and carry out wide-ranging airstrikes to destroy the Syrian army’s weaponry, saying the move was necessary to prevent the arms from falling into the hands of entities hostile to the Jewish State. The developments have created an avenue for potential discord, or cooperation, between Israel and Turkey who both see Iran as a foe.
Established in 1997, the D-8 aims to foster cooperation among member states, spanning regions from Southeast Asia to Africa.