Turkey - Africa Institutional Cooperation: Strategic Impacts, Significance and Challenges (original) (raw)

Opportunity Found: Exploring the Success and Prospect of the Turkey-Africa Cooperation

2022

Ankara views the breakdown of accession talks with the European Union as a fracture of its ambivalent perspective and its distrust of Western powers. As a result, it is reorienting itself toward Africa as an option within the anarchic structure of the international system to realize its regional and global ambitions. This research article argues that the shift in power dynamics in the international system from a realist framework and the increasing role of domestic structural factors and actors as part of the normative underpinnings of a liberal framework explain Turkey-Africa cooperation. The author examines the success and potential of this cooperation and concludes that the Turkey-Africa opening is undoubtedly mutually beneficial if strengthened. It also potentially positions Turkey as an effective Western ally in a potential East-West rivalry.

Continuity and Change in Turkish Foreign Policy Toward Africa

This article aims to give an overview of Turkey's improving relations with African countries. It indicates that Turkey's international relations concentrate more on her relations with the European Union, Caucasians, Balkans, the Middle East and USA. Turkey's opening up to Africa today, is a new development in her international relations. However, such relations had existed during the times of the Ottoman empire, especially with north Africa. Turkish academics, universities and media have not yet grasped the importance of Africa in the academic sense and as such none of them has a center on African research. Likewise, the African academics, universities and media. Other than communications between Turkey and African countries and related institutions on the subject matter, it is not possible to talk about significant serious data on Turkey-Africa relations. The relations between Turkey and Africa were on each individual African country's basis. However, with the recent development in the world today known as "globalization", Turkey is trying to improve her political and economic relations

Understanding new Turkey-Africa Relations: Rationale and Challenges

In recent years, emerging powers such as China, India, Brazil, and Russia have dramatically increased their political, economic, and diplomatic relations with Africa. This phenomenon has led many Western analysts to affirm that emerging powers are competing to dislodge Africa´s traditional partners; i.e., Western Europe and the United States, and pose serious challenges to their interests on the African continent. Each emerging power has its own interests by increasing its involvement in Africa just like the former colonial powers and the United States have so done for centuries. Thus, since the late nineties, Turkey has also joined the pack and increased its engagement in Africa. It is deepening its diplomatic relations with many African countries and the African Union, and developing a new market place for its companies and business community. Against this background, this article intends to give an overview of the Turkey´s new Africa policy, discuss its main political, economic and security rationale and analyze its basic pillars and challenges.

Turkey and Africa in the Context of South-South Cooperation

Current Research in Social Sciences, 2020

In spite of their historical and cultural ties, Turkey and African countries did not develop close relations during the Cold War. The unstable environment in domestic politics of Turkey and several African countries hindered a proper rapprochement in the 1990s as well. Since the turn of the 21st century, however, they have been engaged in a fast-paced cooperation. Turkey's growing engagement in Africa has progressed in tandem with that of other Asian powers, namely China, India, South Korea, Malaysia, and Indonesia. When the increasing presence in Africa of Latin American countries, of Brazil in particular, is added into the whole picture, it can be said that the first two decades of the 21st century has seen a boom in South South Cooperation. This paper treats the mentioned cooperation paradigm as a new aspect of Turkish foreign policy. Given the fact that Ankara was ideologically distanced to the Global South during and soon after the Cold War, the fast-paced Turkish-African cooperation over the last two decades denotes a partial revision in Turkish foreign policy orientation. In the context of this revisionist orientation, the main finding of the paper is that Turkey considers SSC as a way of not only reframing its relations with its African nations but also strengthening the cooperation between rising powers, underdeveloped nations and Islamic political-economic institutions.

A Post-2014 Vision for Turkey-Africa Relations [Insight Turkey, 2014]

Insight Turkey 16.4 (2014): 23-31.

Turkey's foreign policy in Africa has achieved more than what initially has been planned as Opening to Africa in the last decade. A new post-2014 vision for Africa is necessity for variety of reasons including the tiredness among some segments of society and some state institutions. This article outlines the challenges fort his vision and put forward some ideas for the future of Turkey-Africa relations. The underlying point is that time has come for partnership with other actor in Africa to deepen further the relations.

Turkey’s Strategic Economic Relations with Africa: Trends and Challenges

Journal of Economics and Political Economy, 2014

The Ottoman Empire had extensive economic relations with Africa which provides the structural frameworks for the speedy acceleration of economic partnership and trade interactions between Africa and modern Turkey. This study seeks to examine the structural relevance, challenges and prospects of Turkey’s economic relations and interest in Africa from the traditional period of Ottoman Empire to the contemporary era of competitive interdependence. From a broad perspective, trade interactions between Turkey was driven but the values of economic pluralism and less of colonialist tendencies. Therefore, the greatest challenge that tacitly limits the geometric expansion of trade is the shift in perception of Africa as a hub for disease, economic stagnation, waste and wars. This form of stereotype is a direct input of neo-colonial propaganda adopted by the Western media to keep at bay competitive investors from Africa. So, Africa with an economic growth rate of over 5% offers Turkey new hori...

Turkey's Increased Engagement in Africa: The Potential, Limits and Future Perspective of Relations

This article provides an overview of Turkey's recently increased engagement in Africa in terms of the potential, limits and future perspectives of relations. It aims to examine Turkey's foreign policy toward Africa and to analyze the driving force behind this foreign policy between 2001 and 2010. The maidens of Turkish Foreign Policy towards African countries have been analyzed as official initiatives and supplementary efforts that demonstrate significant dynamism of Turkish Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The evidences show that Turkish foreign policy has been managed consistently; and as a result of this, improvements on relations are clearly recorded.