About fifteen tours in as many years, thirty countries visited at the end of the visit which began on Sunday, October 17: Recep Tayyip Erdogan returns to the African continent with constantly growing ambitions. Two months before the third Turkey-Africa summit to be held in Istanbul in December, the head of state is on a three-day trip to take him to Angola, Togo and Nigeria. The partnership with this continent is “Strategic” for his country, he said.
If Ankara has for a time considered its relationship with Africa from a primarily commercial perspective, driven by an argument that hits the mark: “Cheaper than European products and of better quality than Chinese”, the perspectives have since widened to the security field. As reported in the specialized letter Africa Intelligence, a large delegation from Savunma Sanayii Baskanlıgı, the agency that drives the Turkish military industry, is on the trip. “Turkey is now displaying a real policy of complete power where the soft power installed by commerce, Islamic culture and NGOs is coupled with hard power with the sale of armaments ”, analyzes Dorothée Schmid, the Middle East program manager at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).
Mr. Erdogan’s first stop in Angola should have a strong economic tone. Ankara’s announced objective is to increase bilateral trade with this country from 176 million to 500 million dollars (from 152 million to 431 million euros) annually. The recent opening of the Luanda-Istanbul link by Turkish Airlines should contribute to this: the airline which now serves nearly sixty African destinations is an effective tool of influence.
Support the Gülenist movement
Beyond its oil wealth, Angola is also a regional power on which Turkey can rely to assert its ambitions in Central Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Recep Tayyip Erdogan met the President of the DRC, Félix Tshisekedi, in September, in particular to thank him for his involvement in the fight against the movement of the preacher Fethullah Gülen.
Since the failed coup of July 2016, the Turkish power has continued to hunt down the networks and relatives of its former mentor. And the African continent – where the latter was for a time a vanguard of Turkish interests with its quality schools, businessmen and diplomats – is no exception to this international hunt. In May, Fethullah Gülen’s nephew was “Kidnapped” in Kenya according to his family.
The questions around the“Fetö terrorist organization”, in Ankara’s terms, could also be about talks with the President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari. The last meeting between the two men had been tense. “On the Nigerian side, we were close to breaking up”, indicates a good source, President Buhari not accepting the insistence of his Turkish counterpart that the Gülenist establishments be closed as soon as possible.
However, in its expansion strategy, Turkey, who knows how to be flexible on his principles, if necessary, cannot oppose the economic giant of West Africa. Officially, three agreements should be signed in the fields of hydrocarbons, metallurgy and energy, Ankara announced, but military cooperation should also be on the menu.
Geopolitical prism
On October 11, the governor of Zamfara state in northwestern Nigeria announced an agreement to acquire two armed drones from a private Turkish company “To combat banditry and insecurity”, specifying that their supply will be “Consolidated” during the meeting between the two heads of state. Ankara has already supplied such devices to Ethiopia and Morocco, according to the press.
Will it be the same for Togo, the last leg of this trip, a country which is worried about jihadist infiltrations on its northern border and aims to seriously strengthen its army? “No agreement has been confirmed for the moment”, assures Robert Dussey, the Togolese Minister of Foreign Affairs, for whom this visit must be understood under a geopolitical prism. “We do not have the same means as the two powers that are Angola and Nigeria. If President Erdogan has chosen to stop in Togo, it is mainly out of interest for our sub-regional influence ”, he said.
In addition to President Faure Gnassingbé, the Turkish head of state is also due to meet in Lomé with the leaders of Burkina Faso and Liberia. The oldest incumbent president of West Africa, the Togolese leader leads an active diplomacy which allows him to undertake mediations with the Chadian rebels or to have a listening ear on the part of the military in power in Mali. “Turkey sees the instability of some African countries as an opportunity. It immediately tried to capitalize on the coup d’état in Mali to strengthen its presence in the Sahel ”, explains Dorothée Schmid. In August 2020, the head of Turkish diplomacy was the first senior foreign official to meet with the Malian putschists.
This conquering strategy had Somalia as a laboratory with an action combining support for institutions, humanitarian assistance in the name of Islamic solidarity, investment in reconstruction and the opening of a military base. Now at work in the Sahel, it has gradually become a cause for concern in Paris. Mr. Erdogan does not miss an opportunity to scratch France for its African past, promising to the press that the Turks “Will never adopt the old colonial policies with modern means. “
Steamroller
For Paris, Turkey is now looking in the Sahel “To impose itself, to infiltrate the interstices and always to discredit us”, as indicated in January, in front of the deputies Florence Parly, the Minister of the Armed Forces.
In July 2020, Niger and Turkey signed a defense agreement, the ends of which have remained secret. At the army headquarters, some strategists are now considering the possibility of a direct confrontation on the African continent between French soldiers and Turkish regular soldiers or mercenaries.
For now, Libya, with a decisive military commitment alongside the Tripoli government recognized by the United Nations, remains Turkey’s most visible success in Africa. Ankara has, however, already experienced its share of diplomatic defeats with the fall of friendly regimes such as that of Ennahda in Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Omar Al-Bechir in Sudan or Alpha Condé in Guinea. Without seeing its dynamic of conquest on the continent hampered.
As summarized by researcher Benjamin Augé from IFRI, “Despite the failures, the diplomatic and commercial steamroller continues to advance. ” The numbers speak for themselves. In twenty years, the number of Turkish embassies in Africa has increased from nine to forty-three and the volume of trade from 4 billion to 26 billion dollars.