While President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s meeting with a senior Emirati official last week was a significant step toward thawing Turkey’s multifaceted feud with the United Arab Emirates and a number of converging interests are pushing the two sides closer, the path to reconciliation remains bumpy and fraught with uncertainty.
In a glaring U-turn in bilateral ties, Erdogan personally received the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Aug. 18, even though protocol would have required Turkey’s intelligence chief Hakan Fidan or Erdogan’s de facto security adviser Ibrahim Kalin to meet with the Emirati official.