Does “rising power” mean “rising donor”? Turkey’s development aid in Africa

Abstract

For each newly emerging donor in Africa, there are different ways of dealing with the continent, different ways of spending aid and prioritizing the problems. At a political and security level, traditional actors are still the major actors in the continent, while economic and development aid is mostly dominated by the newly emerging non-traditional actors. Turkey as a non-traditional actor has been focusing on development aid and economy, but now it has interested in political affairs and state-building too. This has put Turkey in a middle position between traditional and non-traditional actors in the continent. Since 2011, Turkey is interested to be a more political actor in the continent than being merely an economic power or donor country. This certainly has repercussion for the continent and international actors for possible cooperation and coordination. The main focus of this article will be explaining and contextualizing Turkey’s aid involvement in the continent as the main underlying elements of is interest to be a political power in the last few years.

Becoming Global Actor: The Turkish Agenda for the Global South

“…Turkey has tried to portray herself as an active partner for development assistance, emphasizing the SSC. Compared with traditional DAC countries, Turkey has two favorable features in her relations with African countries: the absence of a colonial past that makes possible a 'clean slate' approach (Abdirahman 2011; İpek & Biltekin 2013) 3 , and the existence of historical (Rudincova 2014) 4 and religious ties (Özkan 2013;Abdurrahim 2015).…”

Sino-Turkish Strategic Economic Relationship in New Era

“…Turkey has attached more importance to global development issues and put more efforts in foreign aid. According to the statistics of OECD, ODA of Turkey in 2010 was $ 967 million, 8 making Turkey an emerging donor. In 2008, Turkey established strategic partnership with the African Union and joined African Development Bank, the first Turkey-Africa Summit was held in Istanbul; at the same year, Ministerial Conference of Turkish-Arab Cooperation Forum was held, which shows that Turkey tries to play a role as a global economic power as China.…”

“…For this reason, their economic contacts with developed countries are increasingly strong. 24 Both China and Turkey are emerging powers that have growing close economic contacts with Asian and African countries, as well as the important contracting powers on global stage. If they can carry out effective cooperation on engineering contracting and form new cooperative model, intensify competition between two countries in the Middle Eastern and African market will be eased largely.…”

Türkiye’nin Sahraaltı Afrika’ya yönelik İnanç Diplomasisi

“…Fildişi Sahili Yüksek İslam Konseyi, 2015 yılında Türkiye'ye gerçekleştirdiği ziyarette Diyanet İşleri Başkanı Prof. Dr. Mehmet Görmez ile bir araya gelerek Diyanet'in bilgi ve tecrübesinden faydalanmak istediklerini belirtmiştir. Görmez ise "Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı, Afrika'daki bütün Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığının Sahraaltı Afrika'da ve diğer bölgelerde gerçekleştirdiği insani yardım faaliyetleri insani diplomasi olarak görülmekte ve etki alanı her geçen gün artmaktadır.Özkan (2013), dinin, Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı aracılığıyla kıtada izlenen dış politikanın bir parçası haline geldiğini savunmaktadır(Ozkan, 2013). 2012 yılında Güney Afrika'yı ziyaret eden Mehmet Görmez, bu ülkeyi ziyaret eden ilk Diyanet İşleri Başkanı olmuştur.…”