Mideast ambitions: Turkey and Egypt seek alliance
CAIRO (AP) -- The image of an Ottoman sultan glowered at the gridlock from a highway billboard in the Egyptian capital, hands clasped, his feathered headgear and gold-hewn epaulettes in elegant contrast to the grind of traffic below. The poster for a Turkish-made movie about the 1453 fall of Constantinople recalled the early feats of an empire that eventually ruled the Middle East and beyond.
Egypt, like Turkey, has its own grand history - evident in the pyramids and other monuments that its ancients left behind, and in a national pride that's distinctive in the Arab world.
The descendants of yesterday's sultans and pharaohs, so to speak, also have ambitions of an outsized role for their respective countries. Each wants to speak for the Middle East.
But they can't go it alone so Turkey and Egypt now talk of working together. In some ways, it's an odd couple.
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