Turkey's 'Novel' enterprising and humanitarian foreign policy and Africa

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429264030-39

This chapter aims to shed light on Turkey’s Africa policy and what role Africa plays in its ‘novel’ enterprising and humanitarian foreign policy. Although the Ottoman Empire had a historical presence in Africa, Turkey had been relatively distant from the continent as a result of different priorities. Its recent return has been a rather aspiring one that began with aid, peace-making and investment projects and continued with ambitious security partnerships. While, historically and traditionally, Turkey has been most active in North Africa, its engagement with sub-Saharan Africa, and especially East Africa, has increased significantly in recent years. The study maintains that, Enterprising and Humanitarian Foreign Policy is not a completely novel conception in Turkey’s foreign policy but rather a rebranding of Davutoğlu’s foreign policy with a hard power twist, particularly in terms of its similarity with his concept of ‘humanitarian diplomacy’. Africa constitutes a perfect arena for Turkey’s imposition of itself as an ‘enterprising and humanitarian state’ through its soft and hard power capabilities. However, this is a rather perceived role and is yet to be fulfilled against Turkey’s actual priorities and competence as well as against the more traditional actors existing in Africa. While there is a clear rising interest by Turkish actors towards Africa, the continent still lags significantly behind Europe or Asia in terms of Turkey’s political, economic, humanitarian and military relations. The fact that Turkish policymakers ceased to call Turkey an ‘Afro-Eurasian state’ could be an indication of such a realisation. Turkey’s Africa policy has proved to be rather resilient against various crises such as the Arab Spring, the failed coup d’état in Turkey, the change of Turkish administration from a parliamentary to a presidential system and recently the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.