Africa-Turkey takes root partnership

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is greeted in Banjul by his Gambian counterpart, Adama Barrow, on January 27, 2020. AP

Text by: Claire Fages Follow

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Charitable, cultural, economic and now security diplomacy... In 20 years, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has considerably densified relations between Africa and Turkey. This partnership is expected to continue to deepen, even if his opponent Kemal Kiliçdaroglu wins the presidential election.

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With a foothold in the Maghreb, the Mashreq, Somalia and Sudan until the early twentieth century, Turkey has long-standing relations with sub-Saharan Africa. "African Muslim populations made the pilgrimage to Mecca, a city that was at the time in the Ottoman Empire," said Jean Marcou, a professor at Sciences Po Grenoble and associate researcher at the French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul. Trade relations too, the darkest aspect of which was the Eastern slave trade during which 250,000 Africans were enslaved in the second half of the nineteenth century.

If at the advent of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Ankara cut itself off from the Middle East and Africa to look to the West and join NATO after 1945, the collapse of the Soviet Union, which put an end to the bipolarity of the Cold War, encouraged Turkey to rebuild its own diplomatic web. "As early as 1998, even before the AKP came to power, the Turkish authorities set up an 'Action Plan for an Opening to Africa'', to offer new perspectives to Turkey's foreign policy, and, in the midst of globalization, to develop its economy," says Jean Marcou.

But it is really Recep Tayyip Erdogan who will strengthen the links, by giving of his person: with more than 40 visits, sometimes two a year, he is the non-African leader who has visited the most states on the continent. In 2005, as Prime Minister, he launched the "Year of Africa", one year before China, five years before the France. Then, in 2008, the year of the First Africa-Turkey Summit, the "Strategic Partnership with the African Union", in which Ankara plays an observer role. Relations are established with ECOWAS and IGAD, but it is bilateral relations that are privileged.

In 15 years, the Turkish network of embassies in Africa grew from 12 to 44. Ankara is now also home to 37 African embassies. In December 2021, still in the midst of a health crisis, no less than 16 African heads of state and more than 100 ministers from the continent are going to Istanbul for the third Africa-Turkey summit.

Tools for social and cultural influence

The field of action is first and foremost humanitarian, cultural and religious. "Diyanet, the Turkish administration of religious affairs, develops social and charitable operations such as food distributions during Ramadan, and renovates and builds mosques, in Mali or Niger, but also in countries with a non-Muslim majority," says the researcher. As for the latest: a spectacular replica of the Blue Mosque in Accra, the capital of Ghana.

Turkish cooperation is particularly noticeable at the time of Covid-19 when Turkish cargo planes follow one another to deliver masks, stretchers, respirators and doses of the Turkovac national vaccine. Agricultural projects, well drilling... In 14 years, Turkey's Cooperation and Coordination Agency, TIKA, has spent $2.2 billion in Africa. It now has 22 branches on the continent.

Linked to the Turkish state, the Yunus Emré cultural institutes and the Islamic confessional schools of the Maarif Foundation – which are gradually supplanting that of Fethullah Gülen, who has broken with Erdogan – are setting up in 36 African countries to spread the teaching of Turkish and Arabic. In 10 years, Turkey also offers 14,000 scholarships to students from the continent. "These will be future relays favorable to Turkey, where think tanks on Africa are beginning to develop," observes Elisa Domingues Dos Santos, associate researcher at IFRI for the Sub-Saharan Africa and Turkey/Middle East centers. In Africa, it is now possible to follow Turkish soap operas on television and, recently, to receive French-language broadcasts from the Turkish channel TRT.

These are all tools of influence for Turkey, as it seeks to impose itself on the international scene. Presenting his country as an "Afro-Eurasian" state, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is advocating for Africa in its battle for a seat on the UN Security Council. "The world is bigger than five," he told the United Nations General Assembly in 2014 at the start of his first presidential term. Today, it is riding the wave of growing hostility in Africa towards the West or former colonial powers, including France.

Construction, air: growing commercial interests

But business is far from being neglected by Turkey in Africa. "What is impressive is not the volume, which represents nothing compared to China or Europe, but it is the growth of the numbers," says the researcher. In 20 years, trade has increased from $5 billion to $35 billion per year.

Until 2011, Turkey only really had trade relations with Libya, Egypt or Ethiopia. The fall of Muammar Gaddafi will push them to take an interest in infrastructure south of the Sahara. The conglomerates Kozuva, Al Bayrak, Summa, Limak, Tosyali are multiplying contracts, with the support of Turkish banks, including Eximbank. Airports, railways, convention centres, hospitals, stadiums... The one in Dakar was inaugurated by Macky Sall and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in February 2022: it came out of the ground in less than a year and a half. Turkish construction companies quickly deliver works, certainly more expensive than those of Chinese competitors, but of better quality, without reaching the prices of Western manufacturers. Niger will soon have its own airport.

The expansion of the Turkish air network benefits from this boom in relations... and accelerates it. Turkish Airlines bills itself as "the foreign airline on the continent that flies to the most destinations in Africa". More than 60 today, compared to four 20 years ago. Istanbul has become a hub for African travelers.

Major Turkish companies, including that of Ahmed Çalik, a close friend of Erdogan, are also targeting African mineral deposits in Guinea, the DRC and more recently Burkina Faso.

An outlet for Turkey's booming military industry

A more recent and no less promising vector of influence: military cooperation has intensified since 2016, the year of the failed putsch in Ankara. The security tightening benefits the military industry and Turkey begins to export its armaments. It sells its tanks to 15 African countries, but also its training planes, targeting pods, combat helicopters, small ammunition ... and its Bayraktar ("flag-bearer") TB2 armed drones. Tested against Turkish dissidents and Kurds, and in Syria, these devices managed in June 2020 to stop Marshal Haftar's offensive against the Tripoli government. Manufactured by Baykar, a private company owned by Erdogan's son-in-law, they are of increasing interest to African states confronted with armed terrorist or jihadist groups.

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It is a competitive weapon, which does not require considerable infrastructure for countries that cannot afford a state-of-the-art air fleet, comments Jean Marcou. A cheap weapon adapted to the conflicts that African countries face ». Another advantage: Turkey offers on-site training, or even some of the drones themselves, and is not very attentive to their use.

After Morocco, Tunisia, Somalia and Ethiopia – which used it against rebels and civilians in Tigray – it is now the turn of Niger, Togo and Burkina Faso to place orders. The latter country has paid part of the bill in gold requisitioned from foreign mining groups and cedes mining concessions to Turkey. Chad, DRC, Angola and Rwanda are also considering acquiring these Bayraktar TB2 drones. Contracts signed under cooperation agreements, a dozen to date, are multiplying.

Turkish armaments still represent only 0.5% of purchases on the African continent (compared to 20% for Chinese armaments and 30% for Russian armaments), but sales have increased sevenfold ($ 328 million in 2021).

Somalia, a model of cooperation... and first military base in Africa

Emblematic of this model of global cooperation, made up of donations and not loans, humanitarian aid and then economic exchanges and military cooperation: Somalia, where there are countless girls who are called "Istanbul" and boys who are named "Erdogan". Turkey provided the Horn country with massive support starting in 2011, during the famine.

Management of camps for displaced persons, food and medical aid, construction of schools and hospitals... Turkey also built the port and airport of Mogadishu, in a country where no Western country wanted to invest. In March 2012, Turkish Airlines operated the first commercial flight. Somalia is emerging from a twenty-year isolation. The last step in this cooperation: in 2017, Turkey set up a military base in Mogadishu, at a strategic location near Djibouti, which houses other foreign bases. It has already trained 15,000 Somali soldiers. Largest overseas base, this is the first in Africa, but perhaps not the last. Discussions are reportedly under way with Niger and Chad.

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Today, African countries want to diversify, empower themselves and not depend on a single partner, says Elisa Domingues Dos Santos. The arrival of Turkey with all this range of tools helps development, on the economy, infrastructure, security, schools, hospitals. It is a lever to diversify partners and defend their own agenda according to how they want to work with foreign partners.

A more secular cooperation in case of alternation?

If Kemal Kiliçdaroglu wins the presidential election on Sunday, religious cooperation and in particular the construction of mosques could be put on hold. "He is a layman, a Kemalist," recalls Jean Marcou. But it poses more the problem of what will become the Dyanet, a bureaucracy to which Erdogan had given a religious dimension that it did not have when it was created in the 1920s.

The opponent denounced the Turkish military intervention in the Libyan civil war in the name of Turkey's tradition of non-interference in the internal affairs of foreign countries... while welcoming the maritime water-sharing agreement between Turkey and Libya, which gives Ankara potential gas deposits in the Mediterranean.

Will drone diplomacy be challenged in Africa? Unsure. But Kemal Kiliçdaroglu could favor the public arms sector, to the detriment of private companies in Erdogan's entourage. He also says he supports industrialization in Africa, which the continent's leaders continue to demand of Turkey.

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The tone could also change, soften towards other external actors in Africa, the Europeans and in particular the French, in case of victory of Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, believes Elisa Domingues Dos Santos. Erdogan's Turkey, far from having created anti-French sentiment in Africa, has played on it to present itself as a third way.

Continuity of a successful partnership

If there is a change of power at the head of the country, however, it should not unduly upset the trend towards deepening relations between Turkey and sub-Saharan Africa, according to the researcher:

« The opening to Africa is, 20 years later, considered a diplomatic success, and the opportunities it has created are commonly accepted by both the camp of the outgoing president and the opposition. The institutional tools implemented are well established. Many of the non-state actors involved, companies and NGOs, will continue to work. This brings foreign currency to Turkey. In choosing to focus on bilateral relations with States and not rebel groups, we can expect continuity for the most part. »

Like Erdogan, Kiliçdaroglu denounces coups in Africa. If elected, the opponent will defend the renewal of the agreement on the grain corridor between Ukraine and Russia, obtained by his opponent and by the UN in July 2022. A crucial agreement for Africa's supply of wheat, oilseeds and fertilizers. "With this cereal agreement," sums up Jean Marcou, "Turkey has espoused a global position that is that of the countries of the South: 'this is not our conflict, we do not want to get involved in it and at the same time, we want to protect ourselves from the effects of the conflict.'" This approach seems to be a consensus between the two opponents of the Turkish presidential election.

" READ ALSO – Presidential in Turkey: Ankara "will retain a strong interest in Africa," says researcher Jean Marcou

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