Bloomberg

11-1-2021

The United Arab Emirates has no reason to be in conflict with Turkey and wants Ankara to stop being the “primary backer” of the Muslim Brotherhood, a top official said.

“We want to tell Turkey that we want normal relations with it that respect mutual sovereignty,” Anwar Gargash, minister of State for Foreign Affairs told Sky News Arabia. “We don’t have any problems with Turkey, like border issues or other such issues,” he said.

The call for Turkey to “recalibrate its relations with Arabs” comes as the UAE and neighbor Saudi Arabia ended a three-year economic and political boycott of gas-rich Qatar, which pushed the Gulf nation closer to Ankara. Abu Dhabi and Ankara are on opposing sides of a proxy war in Libya and disagree on issues ranging from Syria and Iraq to the eastern Mediterranean.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are suspicious of Turkey’s influence in Arab countries and see its regional ambitions as diametrically opposed to their own. Qatar and Turkey don’t share their antipathy toward the Muslim Brotherhood.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said last month that the UAE’s policies toward his nation “are absolutely not friendly” and efforts to mediate “haven’t done any good.”