Cairo: Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan arrived here yesterday evening on his first stop in an 'Arab Spring' tour that starts with Egypt and will proceed onto Libya and Tunisia.
Thousand of the Egyptians awaited Erdogan at the airport, carrying signs of welcome and support.
The Turkish leader’s visit has received a lot of attention from people in Egypt and across the world, due to recent border tensions between Egypt and Israel.
Ankara recently expelled the Israeli ambassador after Tel Aviv refused to apologise for its raid of a Gaza-bound flotilla which resulted in the killing of eight Turks and an American of Turkish descent last year.
In an interview with Erdogan was aired on an Egyptian satellite channel evening talk show, where he defended the concept of secularism, clarifying that it does not contradict with Islam. Erdogan said that he hoped Egypt would also implement a secular system similar to his country's.
Many Egyptians believe Egypt should have have emulated Turkey's resonse to Tel Aviv by also cutting diplomatic relations with Israel as a response to the killing of six Egyptian soldiers on the Egyptian-Israeli border last month.
