Türkiye's intelligence chief, İbrahim Kalın, met his Egyptian counterpart, Hassan Rashad, in Ankara this week, and the first item on the table was Gaza.
The two reviewed the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire, which has done little to stop Israeli strikes, and agreed to keep coordinating to prevent further violations, according to Anadolu Ajansı, citing security sources. Kalın told Rashad that Türkiye would go on standing with the Palestinian people with everything it has.
The truce is meant to hold a line in a war that Türkiye, the International Court of Justice and United Nations experts have described as genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. Ankara has been among the loudest state voices making that charge, and coordination with Cairo, which borders Gaza and helps broker the ceasefire, is central to how Türkiye tries to shape what comes next. Israel rejects the characterization; its denial is not what sets the terms on the ground, where the strikes have continued.
The meeting ranged well beyond Gaza. Kalın and Rashad also worked through Libya, where the two capitals want the rival administrations and armed forces in the east and west brought under a single authority; Somalia; and Sudan, where the army and the Rapid Support Forces are still at war.
That agenda would have been hard to imagine a few years ago. Türkiye and Egypt spent most of the last decade as open rivals, backing opposite sides in Libya and estranged since the 2013 removal of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood government. The two restored full diplomatic relations in 2023, and Presidents Erdoğan and Sisi have exchanged visits since. An intelligence channel running through the region's hardest files is how far that reconciliation has traveled.
Rashad has been busy on the same circuit, meeting Palestinian faction leaders as Cairo tries to keep the Hamas and Fatah tracks from splitting apart, and Kalın has joined ceasefire talks in Cairo. The two services are increasingly working from the same script.