Turkey and Ethiopia responded to Egyptian official’s statement regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is being built on the source of the Nile in western in Ethiopia.

Last Tuesday, Egyptian Irrigation Minister Mohamed Abdel-Muttalib claimed that:

“The Turkish foreign minister visited Addis Ababa and offered them [Ethiopian officials] Turkish expertise.

“What I want to say is that when Turkey built the Ataturk Dam, it made the Syrians and the Iraqis thirsty and ignored international agreements.

I want to stress that Egypt is not Iraq or Syria, and Ethiopia is not Turkey”.

In response, the Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson issued a statement on Thursday. the statement claimed:

We note with regret the reports and comments published by the Egyptian media outlets as well as the statements made by some officials against our country in the face of Turkey’s principled stance regarding the political developments in Egypt, which is in fact well known to the public. This stance takes into consideration the well-being of the brotherly people of Egypt as a whole and aims at contributing to Egypt’s stability and development in a democracy.

Most recently, we also regretted that Mr. Mohamed Abdel-Mottaleb, Egyptian Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources made unjustified and baseless accusations regarding Minister Davutoglu’s latest visit to Ethiopia and Turkey’s policy on water issues in a statement which is related to the construction of the Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia and broadcasted by an Egyptian TV channel on 11 February. We reject such accusations as well as all other allegations against our country that can be considered to be fictitious and we come across in the Egyptian media more frequently during the recent period.

We believe that the Egyptian public opinion will disregard such statements, reports and comments that involve false allegations.

Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Amb. Dina Mufti, similarly downplayed Egypt’s claim, albeit confirming it partially. Anadolu news agency quoted Dina Mufti as following:

“[Such reports] have increased in both frequency and volume, especially after Turkish Foreign Minister [Ahmet Davutoglu], during his recent visit to Addis Ababa, offered to share Turkey’s experience regarding the [construction of the] Ataturk Dam with Ethiopia,” Mufti said.

Mufti went on to say that Egypt had been hinting at an Israeli role in the Ethiopian dam project in hopes of fanning Arab sentiments against it.

“The Ethiopian position has always been that it wants win-win cooperation in terms of utilization of Nile water among the riparian countries,” he said.

The project, Mufti asserted, had been conceived, designed and financed – and is now being implemented – entirely by Ethiopians.

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