This week saw events play out in Ankara that would have been unthinkable not too long ago: Mohamed Bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi’s powerful crown prince and the United Arab Emirates’ de facto leader, flew out to Turkey to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. After Wednesday’s meeting, the two countries inked billions of dollars worth of cooperation and investment agreements in trade, energy, technology, banking, and investments.
The last visit to Turkey by MBZ, as he is popularly known, was in 2012. In the ensuing decade, bilateral relations between the nations collapsed.
In the wake of the so-called Arab Spring, which felled Sunni Arab regimes across the Middle East, Erdogan began pushing a regional order rooted in political Islam, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Islamic Ennahda party in Tunisia. In this project, Turkey allied closely with the UAE’s neighbor Qatar, which also sought to expand its influence through Islamist movements.
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