Turkey Is Stepping Up Its Influence In West Africa – What’s Behind Its Bid For Soft Power

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan (C-R) meets Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame (C-L) during the 3rd Turkey-Africa Partnership Summit, 2021. Mustafa Kamaci/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

BY ISSOUF BINATE

ENSEIGNANT-CHERCHEUR, UNIVERSITE

ALLASANE QUATARRA DE BOUAKE

Turkey is stepping up its influence in west Africa as the geopolitical and economic landscape in the region shifts. In Senegal, the state-owned Turkish Petroleum Corporation has entered a key partnership in the oil and gas sector. Meanwhile, Karpowership, a company providing electricity via floating power plants, now supplies energy to eight African countries. But Turkey’s not stopping there. As part of its soft power strategy, it is also winning hearts and minds through education and culture while deepening trade and security ties.

Historian Issouf Binaté, who has studied Turkey’s growing presence in west Africa, breaks down how Ankara is positioning itself as an alternative to both former colonial powers and newer global players competing for influence on the continent.

What drives Turkey’s growing influence in west Africa?

Turkey’s foreign policy in west Africa leans on two main pillars.

One is institutional power, driven by state-backed agencies (embassies, the religious affairs directorate Diyanet, and the economic cooperation agency (TIKA) .

The other is more grassroots, led by non-state actors such as religious foundations and NGOs.

These groups laid the groundwork for Turkey’s African expansion long before Ankara officially stepped in.

A key player in Turkey’s earlier outreach was the Gülen movement, named after preacher Fethullah Gülen (1941–2024). The Gülen movement pioneered Turkey’s soft power approach with “Turkish schools”, starting with the Yavuz Sultan Selim and Yavuz Selim-Bosphore high schools in Dakar in 1997.

Also at the end of the 1990s a network composed of Turkish business leaders and social activists under the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists, which claimed over 100,000 member companies, expanded Turkey’s influence across Africa. At that time, Turkey had only three diplomatic representations for the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

The more recent contact with Africa comes at a time when western hegemony faces growing criticism from a new generation of Africans engaged in decolonial movements. Gülen-affiliated institutions now number 113, alongside religious and secular schools run by other groups like Mahmud Hudayi Vakfi and Hayrat Vakfi. Since the 2016 political rift between Gülen and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, these schools were gradually transferred to Maarif Foundation, Turkey’s state-run overseas education arm.

Back in 2003, Turkey had only 12 diplomatic missions across Africa. Today, that number has grown to 44, bolstered by Turkish religious foundations (like Mahmud Hudayi Vakfi and Hayrat Vakfi), NGOs, and entrepreneurs who have filled the gap left by the Gülen movement.

Another powerful player in Turkey’s Africa strategy is Turkish Airlines, now one of the top carriers on the continent. It is now flying to 62 airports in 41 African countries.

What role do west African students trained in Turkey play?

By investing in education, Turkey didn’t just open its doors to African students. It also planted the seeds for a long-term influence strategy. These students, and more broadly young African migrants trained in Turkey, are now among the key messengers of “Turkishness” back home.

In doing so, Ankara is following a familiar path once used by colonial powers. They used student mobility as a powerful tool for their diplomacy.

This policy of openness took several forms. As early as 1960, it welcomed students from non-self-governing territories in accordance with UN General Assembly resolutions.

Then, in the 1990s, Turkey continued this effort through a scholarship programme for African students, supported by the Islamic Development Bank. During this period, Turkey launched the Büyük Öğrenci Projesi (Great Student Project), which provided scholarships to international students.

Starting in 2012, this programme was re-branded as YTB (Yurtdışı Türkler ve Akraba Topluluklar Başkanlığı, or Directorate for Turks Abroad and Related Communities). It introduced reforms, including a digital application process for scholarships via an app on the YTB website. This shift caused a dramatic spike in interest. Applications soared from 10,000 to 155,000 between 2012 and 2020.

For non-scholarship students, Turkey simplified visa processes, reduced tuition fees, and offered other incentives. These measures contributed to a significant increase in the number of applicants to study in Turkey. As the number of universities in Turkey jumped from 76 to 193 between 2003 and 2015, the country became increasingly attractive.

By 2017, Turkey had become the 13th most popular destination for students from sub-Saharan Africa, according to Campus France (a platform that supports international students studying in France). By 2019, there were an estimated 61,000 African students studying in Turkey.

Now, nearly three decades into this strategy, many of these former students are stepping into new roles. They are taking over from Turkish entrepreneurs in fostering socioeconomic ties with Africa. They also act as bridges, promoting Turkish universities and supporting visitors in areas like medical and industrial tourism.

In Istanbul, some run cargo companies – some of them informal – that ship goods to Africa. Others are working to formalise these ventures and build long-term economic bridges. Groups like Bizim Afrika, a network of African Turkish-speakers, and the Federation of African Students in Turkey (founded in 2019), are playing key roles in shaping this next chapter of Turkey–Africa relations.

How is Turkey’s strategy in west Africa different from that of China or France?

In substance, Turkey’s strategy isn’t so different from that of France or China. It also carries traces of colonial thinking, even though its approach leans more on religious soft power like building mosques across Africa. Unlike France, which used force in its colonial past, Turkey is trying to gain influence through other means. It uses familiar tools: embassies, schools, cinema, security services, and development agencies.

However, Turkey has learned from the criticism faced by western powers at a pivotal moment in Africa’s global relations.

While access to Europe, the US and Canada has become more difficult due to stricter visa rules, Turkey has opened its doors. It eased visa procedures for African business people, expanded its universities, and promoted medical tourism.

Turkey has become a hub for several sectors. It’s a major centre for nose surgery (rhinoplasty), hair transplants, and textiles. Its textile industry now supplies traders at Makola Market in Accra, Adjamé’s Forum in Côte d’Ivoire, and the Grand Marché in Bamako.

Turkey has also capitalised on the security crisis in the Sahel, where France’s military presence has become controversial. It stepped in by selling Bayraktar TB2 drones and offering private security services to some governments.

Is this Turkish presence set to last?

Turkey’s presence in Africa is now visible in several symbolic ways. You can see it in Maarif schools, murals at Abidjan airport, the “Le Istanbul” restaurant in Niamey’s government district, or the National Mosque in Accra, modelled after Istanbul’s Blue Mosque.

Turkey’s engagement is a work in progress. But its outreach to Africa is already yielding results. Trade volume reached US$40.7 billion in 2022. The return of the first waves of African students trained in Turkey has shifted the dynamic. Cooperation no longer relies solely on Turkish business people and social entrepreneurs.

Even though African elites often speak English, French or Arabic, new voices are emerging. Young people trained in Turkey are beginning to find their place. Many work in import-export, construction, and even Islamic religious leadership. This trend points to promising prospects for long-term ties.

For Turkey, Africa represents a continent with major economic opportunities. Becoming a trusted partner is now a key goal. On the diplomatic level, Turkey gained observer status at the African Union in 2005 and has hosted Turkey-Africa summits in Istanbul since 2008.

This growing involvement suggests that Turkey’s role in Africa is likely to last. It will depend on the continent’s market needs, especially at a time when many African countries are rethinking their relationships with traditional western powers and international institutions.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Turkey’s Parliament Ratifies Finland’s Membership In NATO

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ANKARA, TURKEY (AP) — Turkey’s parliament on Thursday ratified Finland’s application to join NATO, lifting the last hurdle in the way of the Nordic country’s long-delayed accession into the Western military alliance.

All 276 lawmakers present voted in favor of Finland’s bid, days after Hungary’s parliament also endorsed Helsinki’s accession.

Alarmed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago, Finland and Sweden abandoned their decades-long policy of nonalignment and applied to join the alliance.

Full unanimity is required to admit new members into the 30-member alliance, and Turkey and Hungary were the last two NATO members to ratify Finland’s accession.

Sweden’s bid to join the alliance, meanwhile, has been left hanging, with both Turkey and Hungary holding out on giving it the green light despite expressing support for NATO’s expansion.

Turkey’s government accuses Sweden of being too lenient toward groups it deems to be terrorist organizations and security threats, including militant Kurdish groups and people associated with a 2016 coup attempt.


More recently, Turkey was angered by a series of demonstrations in Sweden, including a protest by an anti-Islam activist who burned the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy.

Hungary’s government contends some Swedish politicians have made derisive statements about the condition of Hungary’s democracy and played an active role in ensuring that billions in European Union funds were frozen over alleged rule-of-law and democracy violations.

Turkish officials have said that unlike Sweden, Finland fulfilled its obligations under a memorandum signed last year under which the two countries pledged to address Turkey’s security concerns.

Turkey’s historic city of Antakya, known in Roman and medieval times as Antioch, has been flattened by powerful earthquakes in the past – and rebuilt itself

BY CHRISTINE SHEPHARDSON

Tens of thousands have died and millions have become homeless in southern Turkey and northern Syria after the massive 7.8 earthquake that struck on Feb. 6, 2023. But the ancient Turkish city of Antakya, known in Roman and medieval times as Antioch, has been here before.

In the late fourth-century Roman world, two days after a powerful earthquake shook the border of Turkey and Syria, the Christian preacher John Chrysostom delivered a sermon to the frightened congregation in his shaken city of Antioch, much as survivors today struggle to understand the destruction. “Your nights are sleepless,” he acknowledged, and possessions “were torn asunder more easily than a spider’s web. … For a short time you became angels instead of humans.”

As a historian of Christianity in the late Roman world, my research on the Christianization of Antioch took me to the area in 2006, 2008 and 2010, and my heart has been breaking to see the region where people welcomed me so generously shattered anew. It helps, though, to know Antakya’s rich history and the resilience and courage of its people, who have rebuilt the city before.

The layers of time

The city has known numerous rulers in its long history, and notable religious diversity. Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities have called Antioch home since late antiquity to today.

In the New Testament, Antioch is where Jesus’s followers were first called “Christians,” and the apostles Peter and Paul met in the city. Roman emperors often spent the winters in the temperate metropolis. The fourth-century Greek teacher Libanius declared in his oration “On Antioch” that this city on the Orontes River was so beautiful that even the gods preferred to dwell there.

The ancient Greek and Roman city came under Muslim control in 637, returned to Greek Christian control in the 10th century, Muslim control briefly in the 11th century, and then western Christian control in 1098 during the First Crusade.

The Crusaders established the Principality of Antioch, which lasted until the 13th-century arrival of the Mongols, when after some struggles the city ultimately found itself ruled by the Muslim Mamluks based in Egypt. It became part of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, and after World War I, France oversaw the region as part of Syria until it was annexed by Turkey in 1939. It has received countless refugees since Syria’s civil war started in 2011.

During my visits, the textured layers of the city’s long history were visible everywhere. The main Kurtuluş Street followed the old Roman road, and the Habibi Neccar mosque, destroyed in the recent earthquake, commemorated the city’s early Muslim history on a site that was previously a church.

The Orontes River still flowed through the city, and modern homes nestled, as Roman homes once did, against the mountain where early Christian ascetics withdrew to pray; remnants of the Roman aqueduct and medieval stone walls snaked through the city and up the mountainside.

The trembling Earth

Earthquakes have punctuated the city’s past as well as its present, including at least two that utterly devastated the Roman city in the way that we witnessed in February 2023.

In his “Roman History” from the early third century, the early historian Cassius Dio described the catastrophic devastation and loss of life from the severe earthquake that ravaged the city in 115, as “the whole earth was upheaved and buildings leaped into the air.” The early Christian historian John Malalas survived another devastating earthquake in the city in 526, and he described in his “Chronicle” the terrible fire that compounded the unfathomable destruction after “the surface of the earth boiled up and … everything fell to the ground.”

Today as well, countless buildings have been flattened, like the historic Habibi Neccar mosque, which had already been rebuilt after another earthquake destroyed it in 1853. The medieval Crusaders built a towering stone entrance to the mountain cave church associated with the apostle Peter, and we wait to learn if it has been damaged.

“I can’t tell you how much it was bad,” my friend Hülya replied to my first panicked message on Feb. 6. Much of her family in Antakya somehow survived, but her uncle and niece, our friend Ercan and his young family, and tens of thousands of others in the region were not so fortunate. “Pray for us,” she wrote.

Hope for the future

The city’s history, though, is one of transition and rebirth, and I believe there is hope amid the wreckage.

Malalas wrote that in 526, “Pregnant women … gave birth under the earth and came out with their infants unharmed,” echoing the survival of a baby girl who was born in Antakya on Feb. 6, 2023, under the collapsed rubble of her home, and has been named Aya, an Arabic word that loosely translates as a sign from God. The city’s Hatay Archaeology Museum houses a breathtaking collection of Roman floor mosaics from its suburb Daphne, famous since Roman times for its natural springs, and the Ministry of Culture has personnel on-site to protect it.

As neighbors dig through toppled buildings for survivors, the world rushes to bring aid. My Knoxville, Tennessee, friend Yassin Terou, a Syrian refugee himself, has returned to the region to provide meals for survivors as part of global relief efforts.

Aid workers and volunteers are rushing in to provide medical attention, food, shelter and clean water to the region, though it remains a struggle to reach those isolated in northern Syria.

The scope of the catastrophe is heartbreaking, but these echoes from the Roman past can, I believe, provide a hopeful reminder of the resilience of the city’s people who have rebuilt from devastating earthquakes before. Perhaps with the world’s support, they can do so again.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Trump Will Come Last In The Big Mediterranean Gas Race If Turkey And Russia Get Their Way In Libya

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan visit the MAKS 2019 air show in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, Russia, Aug. 27, 2019. Image: Aleksey Nikolskyl/Kremlin via Reuters

Just like Syria before it, losing Tripoli to the Russians and the Turks will get the US nowhere in terms of maintaining a significant stake over energy supplies into Europe

BY AHMEDABOUDOUH

Colonials units from India, Africa and the Balkans were central to British, French and Ottoman empires until the 20th century. The Ottoman Yayas, for instance, were used as auxiliary units during battles all over the world, and many of them didn’t even have to convert to Islam. They were usually granted vast land estates and generous financial rewards by the Ottoman Sultan in exchange for service in his military.

Now Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeks to revive these imperial traits in the Middle East. Ethnic Turkmen Syrian rebel groups that have fought alongside Turkey in northern Syria are expected to be among Turkish troops and naval forces prepared to be sent to Libya to prop up the internationally recognised government in Tripoli.

Never mind that the fighters are Syrians and have no clue about Libya. And never mind that those fighters have nothing to do with what the Libyans are fighting each other for. The soon-to-be deployed Sham Legion is made up of Islamists with direct links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

These mercenaries are not freedom fighters. Their ideological motivation and regional ambition is clear.

But while those same Syrian rebels are under a Russian-backed destructive military campaign in Syria, their deployment into Libya will fit directly into the Russian agenda in this North African tragedy.

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has found itself playing catch-up to strong alliances in the West. But with Turkey increasingly turning its back on Western Europe and the US, Moscow is looking politically stronger than it has for a long time.

Whether Turkey wants to admit or not, Russia is primed to use Ankara's regional ambitions to its advantage. The discovery of large gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean, around Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel, have left energy-poor Turkey worried, and Moscow knows it. The Russians are masters in the art of disruptive diplomacy and will have no qualms about using Erdogan’s regional ambitions to hinder Western interest in this new energy hub.

Last week, US Congress passed legislation to pave the way for bolstering security and energy partnerships with Eastern Mediterranean countries, in a bid to undermine the Turkish-Russian efforts. As part of this, Donald Trump, the US president, has signed a law that will impose sanctions on any firm that helps Russia's state-owned gas company, Gazprom, finish a pipeline into the European Union – ending in Germany – to much consternation from the EU and Russia.

Meanwhile, Israel, Greece and Cyprus are set to sign an agreement on 2 January for the construction of the EastMed natural gas pipeline to Europe. The new pipeline is expected to supply Europe with 10 per cent of its gas needs, which would potentially hamper Russian gas supplies, going to Southern Europe through Turkey, and breaking European dependence on Moscow.

Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, understands that if the diplomatic scuffle over Israel and Greece ends with Turkey’s fully blocked access to the gas marathon, it will be a blow to Moscow. There is now a decisive and an unprecedented divide in the region, with Russia and Turkey on one side and the US, Israel, Greece and Cyprus on the other.

The US is confronting Russia’s interests, knowing it needs to maintain a significant stake over gas supplies into Europe. But Turkey seems determined to stand in the way, and to grant Russia a free foothold in the south of Europe.

But if Washington really wants to understand Russia's motives, they should look no further than Libya. The whole Libyan conflict, where general Khalifa Haftar is launching a military campaign to capture Tripoli, is all about the gas-rich Eastern Mediterranean. Russia doesn’t particularly back Haftar in his bid to take the capital, there should be no more illusions around this. Russian officials met with the Libyan UN-recognised government’s Chargé d'Affaires in Moscow. At the same time, Russian mercenaries are fighting alongside Haftar’s National Army. And as we speak, Turkish officials are meeting with their Russian counterparts in Moscow to lay the case for future mutual interests in both Syrian and Libya.

The Russians, clearly with Turkey’s support, are upping the game, and trying to dominate both sides of the conflict in Libya, as part of the effort to knock the West out of the country. And so far, the Russian plan comes up trumps. Now, Erdogan is going to send “air, ground and sea” military support, in addition to Syrian Turkmen mercenaries, to block Haftar’s ambitions, but also to boost Russia’s decisive role in the conflict.

The military support is part of a security agreement signed between the Tripoli government and Turkey, alongside another one to draw borderlines that almost don’t exist. Turkey is hundreds of miles away. In doing so, it will be encroaching over Cyprus and other Greek islands on the way.

Instead of reaching out to the central players in the region, Ankara is fixing the scope on imploding the nascent Gas Forum of cooperation between them, in so far as it excludes Turkey. This Turkish aggressive position resulted in the mobilisation of military and naval capabilities by regional powers never seen in the region before.

Turkey is looking to establish a military base either in Libya or Tunisia. In 2017, Ankara and Tunis signed a military cooperation agreement to train Tunisian soldiers and invest in the Tunisian defence. On Thursday, Erdogan paid a surprise visit to Tunisia to discuss “creating stability in Libya.”

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT UK

Saudis Sentence 5 To Death For Jamal Khashoggi's Killing

In this Nov. 2, 2018 file photo, a video image of Hatice Cengiz, fiancee of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, is played during an event to remember Khashoggi, who died inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018, in Washington. A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced five people to death for the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last year by a team of Saudi agents. Saudi Arabia's state TV reported Monday, Dec. 23, 2019 that three others were sentenced to prison. All can appeal the verdicts. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

BY ABDULLAH AL-SHIHRI, AYA BATRAWY

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA (AP) — A court in Saudi Arabia sentenced five people to death Monday for the killing of Washington Post columnist and royal family critic Jamal Khashoggi, whose grisly slaying in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul drew international condemnation and cast a cloud of suspicion over Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Three other people were found guilty by Riyadh’s criminal court of covering up the crime and were sentenced to a combined 24 years in prison, according to a statement read by the Saudi attorney general’s office on state TV.

In all, 11 people were put on trial in Saudi Arabia over the killing. The names of those found guilty were not made public by the government. Executions in the kingdom are carried out by beheading, sometimes in public. All the verdicts can be appealed.

A small number of diplomats, including from Turkey, as well as members of Khashoggi’s family were allowed to attend the nine court sessions, though independent media were barred.

While the case in Saudi Arabia has largely concluded, questions linger outside Riyadh about the crown prince’s culpability in the slaying.

Agnes Callamard, who investigated the killing for the United Nations, reacted by tweeting that the verdicts are a “mockery” and that the masterminds behind the crime “have barely been touched by the investigation and the trial.” Amnesty International called the outcome “a whitewash which brings neither justice nor truth.”

Khashoggi, who was a resident of the U.S., had walked into his country’s consulate on Oct. 2, 2018, for a appointment to pick up documents that would allow him to marry his Turkish fiancee. He never walked out, and his body has not been found.

A team of 15 Saudi agents had flown to Turkey to meet Khashoggi inside the consulate. They included a forensic doctor, intelligence and security officers and individuals who worked for the crown prince’s office, according to Callamard’s independent investigation. Turkish officials allege Khashoggi was killed and then dismembered with a bone saw.

The slaying stunned Saudi Arabia’s Western allies and immediately raised questions about how the high-level operation could have been carried out without the knowledge of Prince Mohammed — even as the kingdom insists the crown prince had nothing to do with the killing.

In an interview in September with CBS’ “60 Minutes”, Prince Mohammed said: “I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia.” But he reiterated that he had no knowledge of the operation, saying he could not keep such close track of the country’s millions of employees.

The prince’s father, King Salman, ordered a shake-up of top security posts after the killing.

Turkey, a rival of Saudi Arabia, has used the killing on its soil to pressure the kingdom. Turkey, which had demanded the suspects be tried there, apparently had the Saudi Consulate bugged and has shared audio of the killing with the C.I.A., among others.

Saudi Arabia initially offered shifting accounts about Khashoggi’s disappearance. As international pressure mounted because of the Turkish leaks, the kingdom eventually settled on the explanation that he was killed by rogue officials in a brawl.

The trial concluded the killing was not premeditated, according to Shaalan al-Shaalan, a spokesperson from the Saudi attorney general’s office.

The 101-page report released this year by Callamard, the U.N. special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, included details from the audio Turkish authorities shared with her. She reported hearing Saudi agents waiting for Khashoggi to arrive and one of them asking how they would carry out the body.

Not to worry, the doctor said. “Joints will be separated. It is not a problem,” he said in the audio. “If we take plastic bags and cut it into pieces, it will be finished. We will wrap each of them.”

Khashoggi had spent the last year of his life in exile in the U.S. writing in the Post about human rights violations in Saudi Arabia. At a time when Prince Mohammed’s social reforms were being widely hailed in the West, Khashoggi’s columns criticized the parallel crackdown on dissent the prince was overseeing. Numerous critics of the Saudi crown prince are in prison and face trial on national security charges.

In Washington, Congress has said it believes Prince Mohammed is “responsible for the murder.” President Donald Trump has condemned the killing but has stood by the 34-year-old crown prince and defended U.S.-Saudi ties. Washington has sanctioned 17 Saudis suspected of being involved.

Among those sanctioned is Saud al-Qahtani, a hawkish former adviser to the crown prince. The Saudi attorney general’s office said Monday that al-Qahtani was investigated and had no proven involvement in the killing.

Meanwhile, Ahmed al-Asiri, also a former adviser to the crown prince who was deputy head of intelligence, was tried and released because of insufficient evidence, the attorney general’s office said.

The court also ordered the release of Saudi Arabia’s consul-general in Istanbul at the time, Mohammed al-Otaibi. He is among those sanctioned by the U.S. over his “involvement in gross violations of human rights.” The U.S. State Department has also issued travel bans against his immediate family.

In Turkey, Yasin Aktay, a member of Turkey’s ruling party and a friend of Khashoggi’s, criticized the verdict, saying the Saudi court had failed to bring the real perpetrators to justice.

“The prosecutor sentenced five hit men to death but did not touch those who were behind the five,” Aktay said.

Although Khashoggi’s killing tarnished Prince Mohammed’s reputation in the West, he is hugely popular at home, especially among young Saudis happy with the social changes he has ushered in. Some American executives who had stayed away because of the backlash over the slaying have resumed doing business with the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia over the past months has opened the previously closed-off country to tourists and travelers from around the world as part of a push to boost the economy and change perceptions of the kingdom.

Batrawy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.

Turkish Youth To Send 10,000 Eyeglasses To Nigeria

A group of cataracts patients wait to have patches removed from their eyes following cataract surgery. Image: Isiyaku Ahmed.VOA News

A youth center that operates under the Tuzla municipality in Istanbul initiated a project to provide eyeglasses to Nigeria, where eye diseases, particularly cataracts, are prevalent. Within the scope of the project, thousands of prescription eyeglasses will be sent and volunteer doctors will conduct free cataract surgeries.

To address a growing number of cataract cases in the Africa continent, the Tuzla Municipality Youth Center (TUZGEM) and volunteer doctors came together to start a charity project, through which the students at the center have collected 10,000 glasses from across the country, mostly through social media campaigns.

The glasses will be delivered to the African country by a Turkey-based charity, Volunteers Association of Health and Education Villages (BİSEG). During the 15-day trip, volunteer doctors are also planning to conduct 800 cataract surgeries.

Tuzla Deputy Mayor Turgut Özcan, the founder of the project, said he has been going to Africa every year, and therefore the students at the center came to him to get involved in such a project.

"When it comes to volunteering, they come up with projects that we can't even imagine," he said, referring to the students.

BİSEG Chairman İbrahim Ceylan said that, for 14 years, they have been providing assistance to the Africa continent, where, in some places, a pair of glasses is a valuable asset.

"Cataracts are one of the biggest problems in Africa. The second problem is gynecological illnesses. We are trying to provide health services in all branches in Africa," he said, adding that the young people will take over these efforts and continue the voluntary aid.

Students Şüheda Kocaman and Emre Fidan noted that they are very glad to be part of such a project, adding that they have received a lot of support from across Turkey. They said that since "the glasses continue coming to the center, they are now collecting them to send to Africa next year."

SOURCE: DAILY SABAH

Sen. Mitt Romney Raises A Troubling Theory About Trump And Turkey

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Capitol Hill on Sept. 23. Image: melina Mara/The Washington Post

BY AARON BLAKE

WASHINGTON (THE WASHINGTON POST) -- Sen. Mitt Romney delivered perhaps the most thorough Republican rebuke of President Trump’s Syria withdrawal Thursday, calling Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds there “a bloodstain on the annals of American history.”

But while that line will get a lot of play, there’s something else Romney said that shouldn’t escape notice. He also floated a theory about how Trump arrived at the decision: that he got bullied into it by Turkey and that he backed down.

“It’s been … suggested that Turkey may have called America’s bluff, telling the president they are coming no matter what we did,” said Romney, of Utah. “If that’s so, we should know it. For it would tell us a great deal about how we should deal with Turkey, now and in the future.”


Romney then returned to the idea that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan might have given Trump an ultimatum that was met with acquiescence.

“Are we so weak and inept diplomatically that Turkey forced the hand of the United States of America? Turkey!?” Romney said. “I believe that it’s imperative that public hearings are held to answer these questions, and I hope the Senate is able to conduct those hearings next week.”

To be clear, there have been suggestions that perhaps Trump got rolled by Erdogan, who has been pitching the idea that Turkey could take over the fight against ISIS in northern Syria for a long time. The possibility that Trump gave away the farm because Erdogan was particularly convincing or because of something else — Trump’s business interests in Turkey, his desire for Middle East withdrawals, etc. — is a well-trafficked theory among Trump’s opponents.

But here is a U.S. senator — and a Republican one — suggesting not just that Trump got out-negotiated, but that he basically got told what was going to happen and ran away. Romney is entertaining the idea that a relatively small country forced the hand of the United States and also dictated to the supposed Dealmaker-in-Chief.

It’s important to emphasize that this is speculation. But it’s also not that far-fetched.

Trump spoke with Erdogan the day he abruptly announced the withdrawal. He also may be entering his final year as president, and Turkey has long wanted to go after the Kurds in northern Syria. If you’re Erdogan, you know that the next president almost definitely won’t be so amenable to your plans for the region. You’ve also been pitching this idea more softly for two years without getting your desired U.S. withdrawal. So why wouldn’t you eventually play this card? It might be a bluff that Trump could call and you’d come to regret, but it might also be your last, best chance to get a compliant U.S. president. And this is an issue of major emphasis for Turkey, which views Syria’s Kurdish fighters as terrorists who constitute a clear and constant threat to it.

Romney, at least, seems to think this might have indeed been what happened, and now he’s calling for hearings on it. Other Trump critics have called for the release of what Trump and Erdogan said on that call, similar to the release of the call with Ukraine’s president.

The White House certainly won’t want to disclose what was said. But we’ve seen with Ukraine that pressure can force disclosure. And at the very least, it seems fair to ask whether Turkey threatened to invade whether U.S. forces were there or not.

Turkey Says It Won't Bow To US Threat Over Its Syria Plans

Residents look on as members of the media work at the border between Turkey and Syria, in Akcakale, Sanliurfa province, southeastern Turkey, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019. Turkey's vice president Fuat Oktay says his country won't bow to threats in an apparent response to U.S. President Donald Trump's warning to Ankara about the scope of its planned military incursion into Syria. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

BY BASSEM MROUE, SUZAN FRASER

BEIRUT (AP) — Turkey will not bow to threats over its Syria plans, the Turkish vice president said Tuesday in an apparent response to President Donald Trump’s warning to Ankara the previous day about the scope of its planned military incursion into northeastern Syria.

Trump said earlier this week the United States would step aside for an expected Turkish attack on Syrian Kurdish fighters, who have fought alongside Americans for years, but he then threatened to destroy the Turks’ economy if they went too far.

The U.S. president later cast his decision to abandon the Kurdish fighters in Syria as fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw from “endless war” in the Middle East, even as Republican critics and others said he was sacrificing a U.S. ally and undermining American credibility.

Trump’s statements have reverberated on all sides of the divide in Syria and the Mideast.

In Ankara, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said Turkey was intent on combatting Syrian Kurdish fighters across its border in Syria and on creating a zone that would allow Turkey to resettle Syrian refugees there.

“Where Turkey’s security is concerned, we determine our own path but we set our own limits,” Oktay said.

Meanwhile, in the Syrian capital of Damascus, Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad called on the country’s Kurds to rejoin the government side after apparently being abandoned by their U.S. allies.

Mekdad’s comments were the first Syrian reaction since Trump’s announcement on Sunday and as northeastern Syria braces for an imminent Turkish attack on Syrian Kurdish militias. Trump’s statement has infuriated the Kurds, who stand to lose the autonomy they gained from Damascus during Syria’s civil war, now in its ninth year.

“The homeland welcomes all its sons and Damascus will solve all Syrian problems in a positive way, away from violence,” Mekdad claimed in an interview with the pro-government daily Al-Watan.

President Bashar Assad’s government abandoned the predominantly Kurdish area in northern Syria at the height of Syria’s civil war to focus on more key areas where the military was being challenged by the rebels. The U.S. began working with the Syrian Kurdish fighters after the emergence of the Islamic State group.

The Syrian government “will defend all Syrian territory and will not accept any occupation of any land or iota of the Syrian soil,” Mekdad said about the expected Turkish incursion.

The Syrian Kurdish force has pledged to fight back, raising the potential for an eruption of new warfare in Syria.

“We will not hesitate for a moment in defending our people” against Turkish troops, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said in a statement, adding that it has lost 11,000 fighters in the war against the Islamic State group in Syria.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the U.S.-backed predominantly Kurdish force that fought IS invited Trump to come see the progress the force and the U.S. made in northeastern Syria.

“We have more work to do to keep ISIS from coming back & make our accomplishments permanent. If America leaves, all will be erased,” he tweeted, referring to the Islamic State group by an alternative acronym.

Turkey, which considers Kurdish fighters in Syria terrorists and links them to a decades-old insurgency in Turkey, has already launched two major incursions into northern Syria over the past years. The first was in 2016, when Turkey and Syrian opposition fighters it backs attacked areas held by the Islamic State group west of the Euphrates River. Last year Turkey launched an attack on the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin, leading to the displacement of some 300,000 people.

Also Tuesday, Iran urged Turkey not to go ahead with its planned an attack on Syrian Kurds, the Iranian state TV reported. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, to express Tehran’s opposition to the anticipated Turkish operation.

Zarif urged Turkey to respect Syria’s integrity and sovereignty, the report said.

Iran, Turkey and Russia have been working together as part of the so-called Astana group on the Syrian civil war, talks that have run parallel to U.N. efforts to find a solution to the conflict.

Trump’s announcement threw the military situation in Syria into fresh chaos and injected deeper uncertainty into the region.

U.S. involvement in Syria has been fraught with peril since it started in 2014 with the insertion of small numbers of special operations forces to recruit, train, arm and advise local fighters to combat the Islamic State. Trump entered the White House in 2017 intent on getting out of Syria, and even before the counter-IS military campaign reclaimed the last militant strongholds early this year, he declared victory and said troops would leave.

In recent weeks, the U.S. and Turkey had reached an apparent accommodation of Turkish concerns about the presence of Kurdish fighters, seen in Turkey as a threat. American and Turkish soldiers had been conducting joint patrols in a zone along the border. As part of that work, barriers designed to protect the Syrian Kurds were dismantled amid assurances that Turkey would not invade.

Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, contributed to this report.

Turkey And The New Scramble For Africa: Ottoman Designs Or Unfounded Fears?

BY ZACH VERTIN

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION

Editor's Note: Turkey has emerged as an important, but confusing, actor in the greater Middle East and beyond. Its policies have oscillated as its role has expanded, and it now plays an important role in the Horn of Africa as well as with its neighbors. Zach Vertin assesses the changes in Turkey's foreign policy and explains how the country's domestic politics and the ambitions of the Erdogan regime interact with the broader strategic realities the country faces. In addition to interviews in the Horn of Africa and in Gulf capitals, material and quotations herein are drawn from the author’s consultations with Turkish officials, foreign policy experts, diplomats, and commentators in Ankara and Istanbul in March 2019. This piece originally appeared on Lawfare and was edited by Daniel Byman.

“The Horn of Africa will be the first casualty,” opined one dejected Somali, shaking his head. He might have been talking about terrorism, or climate change, or the famines that have more than once devastated his region. Instead he was referring to a toxic new contagion imported from the Middle East—the Gulf crisis that, since 2017, has pitted Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain against Qatar and its ally Turkey. That feud is now infecting the Horn, a neighborhood already fighting to cure its own long-standing ills.

Turkey features regularly in new debates about foreign influence in the region, as does speculation about its motives. While Ankara fashions itself a benevolent power driven by an “enterprising and humanitarian” foreign policy, Gulf rivals say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s moves in the Horn reflect a dangerous quest for a “neo-Ottoman” revival.

Does Ankara have grand designs on the region, or have its ambitions been overstated? In confronting this question, three vantage points are helpful: a close look at its recent activity in Horn states, a medium-range focus on regional competition with Gulf rivals, and a wide-angle assessment of Turkish foreign policy making at a time of extraordinary domestic change. Together, these perspectives help contextualize Turkish engagement in the Horn and its desire to project influence beyond its near abroad. But they also reveal a Turkey in search of itself, at home and abroad—one less interested in, and less able to, effect the kind of neo-Ottoman agenda feared by its critics.

The Zoom Lens: Turkish Engagement in the Horn

Ankara’s diplomats lament being lumped together with Gulf “newcomers” when talking about the Horn of Africa and wider competition in the Red Sea region. Turkey has not only been active in the Horn for longer, they say, but its engagement has been more nuanced than the “paycheck diplomacy” favored by Gulf nations. Turkish diplomats have a credible argument, and Somalia is a case in point.

Erdogan first visited Mogadishu in 2011 amid a devastating famine, the first non-African leader to visit the war-torn capital in two decades (and a talking point Turkish officials never omit). What began as a principally humanitarian initiative grew into a more comprehensive policy: Ankara surged aid funding, initiated development projects, opened schools, and assumed a leading role in shaping the state-building agenda, including opening a sizable military facility to train Somali government soldiers. Today, Turkish firms operate Mogadishu’s air and sea ports, its markets are flush with Turkish-manufactured goods, and Turkish Airways flies direct to the capital city—the first major international carrier to do so.

Ankara’s approach in Somalia, underwritten by Erdogan’s appeal to Islamic solidarity and a more visible presence on the ground than traditional donors, has been widely lauded by Somalis. For many, the tenor of its engagement, and the fewer strings attached, draw stark contrast to perceptions of failed Western interventions past. Most recently, Turkey appointed a special envoy for Somalia in 2018—a first in Turkish foreign policy—and tasked him to renew efforts, however unlikely in the near term, to reconcile Somalia’s federal government and the breakaway region of Somaliland.

While officials in Ankara report that they have come to appreciate the soft power value of their investments in Somalia, Turkey’s presence was not envisioned as a long-term strategic project at the outset. Its gradual assumption of a prominent role has been more learning experience than calculated power play, one accompanied by domestic debate about how its posture is perceived—not only in Somalia, but across the continent.

Turkish engagement in Somalia represents the most substantive outgrowth of Ankara’s ambitious “Open to Africa” policy, which emerged in 2005 and aimed to boost Turkish diplomatic and commercial presence across the continent. The initiative has included dozens of new embassies, Turkish Airways routes and regular Turkey-Africa summits. Though notable progress has been made in the 14 years since (now 42 embassies and 54 airline destinations), investments have been relatively modest and diplomats acknowledge the next phase of the strategy is yet to be written.

Sudan, another Muslim-majority nation in the Horn and one with a history of Ottoman influence, was controlled—until last month—by a nominally Islamist (and decidedly repressive) government with historic ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Its relations with the United States have long been troubled, making it another attractive satellite for Erdogan, who has sought to fashion Turkey as a model for the Muslim world and an alternative to a West that has surrendered its moral authority.

Erdogan doubled-down in Sudan in early 2017, investing in what by many accounts became a close relationship with then-embattled leader and International Criminal Court-indictee Omar al Bashir. During Erdogan’s state visit to Sudan, the two men visited Suakin Island—a historic and long-defunct Ottoman trading post on Sudan’s Red Sea coast and a one-time launching point for African Muslims traveling to Mecca. Among the dozen cooperation agreements inked was a pledge from Erdogan to restore the island, revive its cultural significance and reestablish annual ferries to the holy sites.

But the bilateral deals—together totaling some $650 million—also included plans to boost military cooperation and build a docking facility for naval and civilian vessels at Suakin. Egyptian and Saudi media outlets immediately cried foul, one accusing Sudan of “conspiring against Egypt under the shadow of Turkish madness” and framing Erdogan’s visit as an unambiguous attempt to “harass” Cairo. Gulf and Egyptian fears of a Turkish military base on the Red Sea are mostly unfounded, as Suakin’s small size and Turkey’s current financial woes render that an unlikely prospect, at least in the near term. But the historic island reflects deepened ties with Sudan, and so carried symbolic value in the wider chess match among Middle East contenders. The disquiet from rivals was not lost on Ankara.

Turkey’s renewed partnership with Sudan encountered unexpected challenges thereafter, and is now in serious jeopardy following last month’s ouster of President Bashir and the political chaos that enveloped Khartoum. The popular protests that gripped Sudan in early 2019 left Turkey wondering where to stand, as senior officials privately articulated both deep concern about the prospect of uncontrolled collapse and an appreciation of the demands of the street. “Managed transition” was preferable, one told me, just weeks before Bashir was dethroned by the Sudanese army. “But how can we be seen as against a people struggling for their rights?”

As the country now struggles to hold itself together and fashion a political transition, Egypt and Turkey’s Gulf rivals have moved quickly, offering resources and asserting influence in an attempt to shape a new Sudan in their image. President Erdogan meanwhile has signaled a desire to sustain his country’s “deep-rooted relations” with Sudan and his government refuted claims that the Suakin agreement had been canceled. A senior Turkish official privately acknowledged they are now in a “wait and see” posture, inclined to support a transitional government but conscious of public perceptions regarding their close relationship with the old guard. Sorting out Sudan’s transition will take time, and while much remains to be determined, many are already interpreting Bashir’s demise as a strategic blow for Turkish foreign policy in the region.

While Somalia and Sudan have proven the most natural targets for Turkish cooperation, neighboring Ethiopia is the region’s ascendant power—and the most recent subject of new Gulf entreaties. Though Turkish schools and mosque diplomacy—two core instruments of Erdogan’s Islamic soft power—have been deployed in Ethiopia, Ankara has been relatively less visible in the predominantly Orthodox Christian nation. But its commercial investments in Ethiopia reportedly outweighthose in both Somalia and Sudan and a growing number of Turkish voices are urging Ankara to make it a priority.

In addition to a new market for commerce, some hawkish Turkish commentators told me they believe a partnership with Ethiopia could provide useful leverage against Egypt, should relations with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his allies remain testy. Given Ethiopia’s 2018 policy shift in Somalia—in which new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed pledged to work with Mogadishu’s federal government—Turkish observers also see new opportunities for cooperation with Ethiopia on Somalia. These advocates of more robust Turkish engagement may get their wish, as Ethiopian officials report Erdogan has recently proposed a visit to Addis Ababa.

To round out the Horn, Turkey has also made modest investments in the tiny port nation of Djibouti, while Eritrea is out of reach, for now. Its own strongman president has been squarely in the Saudi/UAE camp since Gulf partners paid him to lease a military base in 2015 and later helped lift UN sanctions against the long-ostracized nation.

Turkish officials argue their country’s initial interest in the Horn was economic and values-driven. An appreciation of the wider geopolitical currency followed, they say, and only as a result of time and changing regional circumstances. Turkey’s actions in the Horn today may be motivated in part by competition with Gulf adversaries, they acknowledge, while uniformly characterizing such moves as reactive.

“Yes, we have found ourselves in a rivalry there,” one told me, “but we did not go looking for one.”

The Mid-Range Lens: Turkey and the Gulf Arab Crisis

When asked about Turkey’s foreign policy priorities, most Turkish officials and analysts suggest the Horn of Africa does not break the top five issues. But a majority affirm it is significant for Turkey nonetheless. Understanding why requires widening one’s field of view, seeing the Horn as part of a larger strategic contest for influence across the Middle East, the Red Sea and the western Indian Ocean.

First, fault lines in the Horn of Africa reflect the hardened axes of the 2017 Gulf crisis, a feud that has affected a menu of regional problem-sets from Syria to Libya to Iran and is sometimes colored by an ideological row over the role of Islam in politics. While Erdogan’s ruling AKP party is rooted in political Islam and identifies with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Emiratis see the Brotherhood as an existential threat and have generally sought to extinguish Islamist forces across the region.

Prior to the 2017 crisis, Saudi and UAE relations with Turkey were complicated but better than is sometimes appreciated. Mistrust persisted over divergent worldviews, concern about Turkey’s role in the region and how to deal with Iran. (Gulf states then saw Turkey as a potential Sunni counterweight to Iran but today are troubled by Ankara’s new cooperation with Tehran, particularly in Syria). Erdogan’s government, meanwhile, harbored doubts about where Saudi and Emirati leaders stood on the attempted coup against him in 2016 but was not about to sacrifice sizable Gulf investments. As such, high-level exchanges, trade and new economic cooperation continued into 2017. But all that changed when Turkey came to Qatar’s defense in the first days of the blockade—sending not only food, supplies and high-level visitors but also fresh troops and equipment to a recently opened Turkish military base outside Doha.

Some Turks appear to have embraced the contours of the new rivalry, including its manifestations in Africa. But most express concern, arguing the crisis is bad for Turkey, bad for its economy and bad for the region. They cite deep unease over the absolutist posturing of Gulf antagonists, the destabilizing impact on already fragile countries across the Middle East and Africa, and the unintended consequences for shared concerns such as Iranian expansionism. Government officials argue that Turkey is, and must be, more pragmatic in its foreign relations. “We cannot afford to be emotional … or fixated on perceived slights,” one told me, a thinly veiled reference to Gulf antagonists.

Ankara also blames Washington for the Gulf crisis, citing President Trump’s cozy relationship with the Saudis and remarks parroting criticism of Qatar in the first days of the crisis—rhetoric Turks believe gave the Arab quartet carte blanche to pursue the blockade and possibly even military action. Having fanned the flames, Turkish commentators say, it is incumbent upon the United States to take greater action to resolve the spat. They bemoan the Trump administration’s wider collaboration with Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv—a bloc they see as attempting to redesign the Middle East in a misguided fashion.

By extension, Turkish observers also wonder whether Saudi and Emirati expansion in the Horn is not only licensed by, but also guided from, Washington. However, such a reading drastically overestimates the current U.S. administration’s interest in the Horn of Africa, not to mention Washington’s ability to task Gulf allies in the service of its interests.

Eschewing discussion of their own country’s authoritarian drift, Turkish officials—and presidential backers in particular—deride Saudi Arabia and the UAE as undemocratic and illiberal while heralding Erdogan as the voice of justice and modernity. “You see, he is a successful leader whose legitimacy comes instead from elections,” one argued, “someone who balances traditional and moderate Islamic values with modern liberal practice.”

Turks across the political spectrum say the so-called “Turkish model”—marrying democratic elections and Islamic values—represents an existential threat to Gulf monarchies. Citing polls showing their president as the most popular figure on “the Arab street,” supporters contrast Erdogan the everyman, champion of grassroots reform across the Islamic world, with the entitled princes of the Gulf. The royals’ animosities are thus understood not only as a reaction to Ankara’s siding with Doha or its ties to the Brotherhood, but also as a product of the monarchies’ own insecurities, especially in the wake of the 2011 Arab uprisings.

President Erdogan views Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with disdain, according to many Turkish observers, a sentiment reinforced by perceptions of nefarious influence from the UAE’s Mohamed bin Zayed, coddling from the Trump administration and, most recently, the audacious murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. But citing his consistently respectful remarks about the Saudi king, many Turks argue that Erdogan has sought to preserve the space for a relationship with the Saudi state, if not for its brash young prince.

The UAE is another story. Divisions between Ankara and Abu Dhabi run deeper, and views of its leader are more contemptuous. Tensions with the UAE reached a boil following the toppling of Egyptian president and Turkish ally Mohammed Morsi in 2013, a plot the Turkish establishment believes emanated from, and was financed by, Abu Dhabi. And while claims are less strident, many Turkish officials privately suggest the UAE was also involved in the attempted coup against Erdogan in 2016.

Turkish officials dismiss the notion that it is looking to compete with the UAE in the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea or anywhere else. “Why would we bother?” is a common refrain. They chafe at the suggestion that they would be preoccupied with a small “new money” state like the UAE, as Turkey is a civilization of consequence—its power born of history, size and cultural significance. But the foreign policy activists in Abu Dhabi garner more attention in Ankara than it likes to admit.

The new generation of sheikhs—both bin Zayed and his perceived understudy, bin Salman—are seen as “reckless” and “aggressive,” their cash-backed influence campaigns designed to buy individuals and crush the forces of reform. “Bribery, stoking of conflict, all kind of shady things underway,” one Turkish official scoffed. “This policy will backfire, it will not work in the end.”

Turkish-Qatari relations are at a high point, by contrast. The relationship with Doha was “not particularly special” prior to the crisis, Turkish officials say, and both sides acknowledge areas of divergence today. But for now, the alliance is underwritten by expedience, enhanced trade relations, ideological commonalities, and chemistry between Erdogan and the Qatari emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. (The fact that Qatar, like its Gulf neighbors, is a status quo monarchy is a fact conveniently omitted.)

“Our politicians are quite sentimental,” one senior civil servant explained of Turkish solidarity amid the blockade of Doha. “[T]hey will always come to the aid of the underdog. It’s born of a sense of justice.” It is also born of a thirst for cash, of course, something Doha was ready to cough up as it sought to shore up powerful allies. In addition to helping stem Turkey’s currency crisis, the Qatari emir offered a $15 billion capital-injection thank you in 2018 for Turkey’s timely show of support.

Turkish officials reject allegations, however, that their new military base in Qatar represents a threat to Gulf neighbors, arguing it was the product of an agreement penned three years before the onset of the Gulf spat, in 2014. They dismiss such claims as disingenuous, but observers both foreign and domestic say Ankara misread the implications of the base deal—at the very least failing to appreciate how Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would react to Turkish boots on the ground in their backyard.

The Wide-Angle Lens: Foreign Policy or Domestic Politics?

Atop the list of Turkey’s foreign policy priorities are Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean; complicated relationships with the United States, Russia and Europe (including EU accession); and promotion of its own political-religious brand across a changing Middle East. The Horn comes later, but because it is linked to a wider strategic context, Turkey’s adversaries see Erdogan’s moves in the region as evidence of a dangerous “neo-Ottoman” agenda—and there is ample supply of Erdogan rhetoric to support those claims.

While provocative on its face, the Ottoman nostalgia is primarily for domestic consumption—a nationalist rallying point for Turkish identity in a time of tumult, and a pillar of Erdogan’s swashbuckling brand of populism. “Domestically, this rhetoric has sentimental value,” one Turkish expert assessed, “but it does not represent a real foreign policy pursuit.”

The nuance isn’t clear to everyone on the outside, though, the result of an especially knotty meld of domestic politics and foreign policy under Erdogan.

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the “Turkish model” seemed ascendant. For Erdogan, a strong, democratic and prosperous Turkey would help him project increasing influence abroad, which in turn would help cement the perpetual campaigner’s popularity at home. But the landscape of the Middle East looks different now, eight years on, and so too do Turkey’s economic and democratic credentials.

Erdogan’s ambition to sit atop a revitalized Muslim world remains, and soft power projections are likely to continue. But concerns about neocolonial or even territorial conquest are overstated. Such distinctions may be harder to disentangle than ever before, and interpreting Turkish foreign policy, including in the Horn of Africa, requires a careful look inside Turkey’s borders, where three dynamics warrant consideration.

First, the consolidation of power in the new Turkish presidency—the latest development in the country’s steady democratic regression. Following a resounding electoral victory in 2018, Erdogan began swiftly transforming a century-old parliamentary system into a decidedly centralized presidential one. Foreign policy making has thus been concentrated in the palace, too, while the military, foreign ministry and other critical institutions have been pushed to the margins.

The foreign ministry has been relegated to acting as an “implementing agency” while Erdogan’s advisers—including an 11-man security and foreign policy board—have taken the reins in shaping policy. This came after Erdogan purged some 25 percent of career diplomats from the foreign ministry, a reflection of wider government cuts against perceived political opponents—tens of thousands of them—in the wake of the 2016 coup attempt. (Many of those purged were so-called “Gulenists.” The ripple effects of the attempted putsch extended to the Horn of Africa, too, where many of Turkey’s initial business, education and nongovernmental organization links were developed by those tied to accused coup mastermind and Erdogan-foe Fethullah Gulen. Many Turkish-run schools were immediately closed on account of their Gulenist affiliation before being transferred to government-affiliated administrators.)

Second, Turkey’s economy is in the tank, leaving the strong-man president exposed on the one issue he may not be able to strong-arm. After years of impressive growth, economic micro-mismanagement and Erdogan’s sweeping institutional changes prompted a major downturn last summer. Bad turned to worse when the Turkish lira plummeted in eye-popping fashion, a freefall he attempted to blame on foreign conspirators. Investor confidence has waned while inflation, unemployment and prices have soared. Operating budgets and humanitarian aid allocations—an area in which Turkey previously led the world—have been slashed, curtailing agendas of all kinds, including in foreign policy.

Third is an Erdogan obsession: elections. How far Erdogan can extend himself abroad will depend in part on overcoming political uncertainty (including skepticism about his foreign policy) and stabilizing the economy at home. This spring’s nationwide municipal elections, which shaped up to be a referendum on Erdogan’s stewardship, yielded notable defeats for the president’s party, including in both Ankara and Istanbul. (Results of the Istanbul poll were later invalidated under pressure from Erdogan.) Moreover, Erdogan was forced to take drastic, and some say shortsighted, steps to try to shore up the economy ahead of the polls, which may ultimately leave an even deeper hole from which to climb. Will the president focus more attention at home to address the challenge, or again turn to foreign policy populism to aid a political recovery?

Erdogan has attempted to fashion Turkey as a humanitarian power from Somalia to Syria and a welcome refuge for the world’s displaced. He has positioned himself as a champion of working-class underdogs across the Muslim world and moral defender of its besieged communities—from Palestine to Christchurch. His standing up to the West, to Israel and to Gulf monarchs win him acclaim among sizable constituencies. But critics worry that all the bravado doesn’t add up to a coherent strategy, particularly amid the turbulence and democratic backsliding at home.

A right-sized assessment of Turkish ambitions and its influence in the Horn of Africa requires zoom, medium, and wide-angle lenses. The Horn may not be a first-tier foreign policy issue in Ankara—a fact that, when coupled with Turkey’s political introversion and a surge of interest from Gulf adversaries, could diminish Ankara’s comparative edge in the region, at least in the near term. Turkey’s political and economic investments in the Horn should not be underestimated, nor should its continuing presence there, given the larger geopolitical context. But for the moment, Turkey is in search of itself—at home and abroad.

SOURCE

Turkey: Highest Level Of Saudi Govt Ordered Writer's Slaying

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, listens to Technology Minister Mustafa Varank at a defence technology development meeting, in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2018. Turkey's state-run news agency says the Turkish military has shelled positions held by U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters across the border east of the Euphrates River in Syria, killing four Kurdish fighters and wounding six others. The attack came a day after Erdogan said Turkey has finalized plans for a "comprehensive and effective" operation to drive out Kurdish militia from the region.(Presidential Press Service via AP, Pool)

BY SUSAN FRASER

ANKARA, TURKEY (AP) — The order to kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi came from the highest level of the Saudi government, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday, adding that the international community had the responsibility to “reveal the puppet masters” behind the slaying.

In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Erdogan said he did not believe that Saudi King Salman had ordered the killing of Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate on Oct. 2. He said Turkey’s close ties to Saudi Arabia did not mean that Turkey could turn a blind eye to the killing of the journalist.

“We know that the order to kill Khashoggi came from the highest levels of the Saudi government,” Erdogan said.

Erdogan wrote: “As responsible members of the international community, we must reveal the identities of the puppet masters behind Khashoggi’s killing and discover those in whom Saudi officials —still trying to cover up the murder — have placed their trust.”

Istanbul’s chief prosecutor announced Wednesday that Khashoggi, who lived in exile in the United States, was strangled immediately after he entered the consulate as part of a premeditated killing and that his body was dismembered before being removed.

Turkey is seeking the extradition of 18 suspects who were detained in Saudi Arabia so they can be put on trial in Turkey. They include 15 members of an alleged Saudi “hit squad” that Turkey says was sent to Istanbul to kill The Washington Post columnist who had written critically of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Some of those implicated in the killing are members of the crown prince’s entourage.

In the opinion piece, Erdogan did not mention the prince. But few in Turkey and elsewhere believe that the crime could have been carried out without the knowledge of the kingdom’s powerful heir apparent.

Meanwhile, a Turkish official said he believes Khashoggi’s body was dissolved in acid or other chemicals after it was mutilated.

Yasin Aktay, a ruling party adviser to Erdogan, told The Associated Press on Friday that “there can be no other formula” to explain why Khashoggi’s remains have not been found a month after he was killed.

Aktay, who was friend of Khashoggi’s, said he believes that the body was cut into pieces so that it could be dissolved in chemicals. He said: “all the findings point to his body parts being melted.” But the official did not offer any proof for his comments.

Khashoggi had entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to collect a document he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee.

In Bulgaria on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Khashoggi’s slaying a horrendous act that “should be duly dealt with” in a way that doesn’t undermine Saudi Arabia’s stability.

Netanyahu said at a news conference that Iran is a bigger threat than Saudi Arabia and those who want to punish the Middle East kingdom need to bear that in mind.

“A way must be found to achieve both goals, because I think that the larger problem is Iran,” said the Israeli leader, who attended a meeting of the prime ministers of Bulgaria, Greece and Romania and the president of Serbia at a Black Sea resort.

The Latest: HRW: Khashoggi’s Son Leaves Saudi Arabia For US

In this Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018 file photo, journalists report from outside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Saudi Arabia’s financial clout among the Arab media has given it an influential tool as it grapples with the international outcry first over the disappearance and later the death of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi. From the time he vanished into the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul, Riyadh’s allied newspapers and TV stations across the region echoed the Saudi denial of any knowledge of his fate or weaved alternative scenarios of an alleged plot by rivals Qatar and Turkey to destabilize the kingdom. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis

ISTANBUL (AP) — The Latest on the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi (all times local):

7:35 p.m.

Human Rights Watch says Jamal Khashoggi’s son has left Saudi Arabia and is on his way to the United States.

Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Human Right’s Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division, said that Salah Khashoggi and his family left the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Thursday after a travel ban on him was lifted.

Turkish officials say his father Jamal, a Washington Post columnist who was critical of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, was killed Oct. 2 when he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by Saudi agents.

The kingdom has faced intensifying international pressure to be transparent about the death of Khashoggi. After initially claiming that the journalist left the consulate, Saudi prosecutors said Thursday that Turkish evidence shows the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was premeditated.

4:30 p.m.

Germany’s economy minister says “many question marks” remain over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, who is on a two-day visit to Turkey to boost trade ties, praised Turkish officials on Thursday for their efforts to shed light on the killing. He said the slaying of Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi royal family, has drawn widespread condemnation.

Saudi prosecutors said Thursday that Turkish evidence shows that the killing of Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post, was premeditated. It was another apparent change in the shifting Saudi Arabian narrative of what happened to the writer.

3:30 p.m.

European Union lawmakers are calling for an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia as well as a ban on equipment that could be used in any government crackdown.

The lawmakers voted Thursday by 325 for, 1 against and 19 abstentions on a resolution calling on member countries “to impose an EU-wide arms embargo on Saudi Arabia” in response to the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

The non-binding resolution also demands a halt to exports “of surveillance systems and other dual-use items that may be used in Saudi Arabia for the purposes of repression.”

Leading Greens lawmaker Ska Keller said “EU countries must not continue to turn a blind eye to the serious human rights violations committed by the Saudi government.”

Many EU nations are debating a halt to arms exports but there has been no clear push for an embargo.

2 p.m.

Saudi Arabia says the country’s powerful crown prince has attended the first meeting of a committee aiming to restructure the kingdom’s intelligence services after the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency made the announcement on Thursday.

It comes after the kingdom announced over the weekend that 18 Saudis had been arrested in the writer’s slaying, while four senior intelligence officials and an adviser to the crown prince had been fired.

The kingdom is trying to distance Prince Mohammed bin Salman from Khashoggi’s Oct. 2 slaying at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Turkish reports said a member of his entourage was involved in the crime.

On Wednesday, the prince called the killing “heinous” and “painful to all Saudis” in his first extensive public remarks on the topic.

1:45 p.m.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency says Saudi prosecutors are calling the killing of Jamal Khashoggi a premeditated crime.

A statement Thursday quoted Saudi Attorney General Saud al-Mojeb as saying that investigators came to that conclusion after evidence presented by Turkish officials as part of the two nations’ investigation into the killing.

Khashoggi was killed Oct. 2 at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Saudi Arabia had insisted for weeks that Khashoggi had walked out of the consulate, before changing their account to say he died in a brawl.

A member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s entourage on foreign trips was seen at the consulate before the Washington Post columnist’s slaying.

12:20 p.m.

Turkey has been focusing on a well in the garden of Saudi Arabia’s consulate as part of its investigation into the killing by Saudi officials of writer Jamal Khashoggi, whose body is still missing.

There were conflicting reports Thursday about whether investigators had searched the well in a case that has geopolitical implications because of the Saudi-Turkish rivalry in the Mideast region, as well as the U.S. alliance with both countries.

Yeni Safak, a pro-government Turkish newspaper, says investigators emptied the well and are awaiting the results of an analysis of the water to determine whether body parts were dumped there.

But Sabah, another pro-government newspaper, says Saudi Arabia has yet to give Turkish authorities permission for a search.

The Latest: UN Would Look Into Saudi Writer’s Death If Asked

Turkish police crime scene investigators, looking for possible clues into the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, walk toward an underground car park, where authorities Monday found a vehicle belonging to the Saudi consulate, in Istanbul, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018. Saudi officials murdered Khashoggi in their Istanbul consulate after plotting his death for days, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday, contradicting Saudi Arabia's explanation that the writer was accidentally killed. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

ANKARA, TURKEY (AP) — The Latest on the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi (all times local):

8:15 p.m.

The United Nations says Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stands by his earlier call for an independent and transparent investigation into the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq reiterated Tuesday that the secretary-general can initiate an investigation if key parties request it or if there is a legislative mandate from a U.N. body.

Saudi Arabia said early Saturday that Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, was killed during a “fistfight” in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. an explanation many countries have questioned.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with state-run Anadolu Agency on Tuesday that “If a request for an international investigation is made ... we would cooperate.”

Haq said that did not constitute a formal request from Turkey’s government, which Guterres would need to consider authorizing an international investigation.

7:30 p.m.

Turkish state media say investigators found three suitcases, a laptop computer and clothing inside a car belonging to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

State television TRT reported that Turkish crime scene investigators inspected the vehicle on Tuesday for possible evidence in the slaying of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Authorities discovered the car at an underground garage on Monday.

Saudi Arabia has said Khashoggi was killed in a fistfight that broke out inside the consulate. Turkey says he was the victim of a planned killing.

Turkish authorities have not found the journalist’s body.

7:10 p.m.

Foreign ministers from the G-7 group of industrialized nations say the explanations offered for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi leave many questions unanswered and those responsible for the death must be held to account.

A joint statement from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, along with the European Union, condemned Khashoggi’s slaying in the “strongest possible terms.”

They called Saudi Arabia’s confirmation of the writer’s death inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul a first step toward full transparency and accountability.

The statement issued Tuesday reiterated the need for a thorough, credible and prompt investigation done with the full collaboration of Turkish authorities.

The G-7 ministers say Khashoggi’s killing demonstrates the need to project journalists and to reaffirm the right to free expression.

6:45 p.m.

The European Union’s top diplomat says the bloc is working with the group of seven most industrialized nations to coordinate a response to the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Tuesday that “the European Union’s reaction from now on will depend on the next steps that will be taken by the Saudi authorities.”

Mogherini told EU lawmakers that foreign ministers are working with their G7 counterparts on “further steps and statements to be taken together.” She did not go into detail about those steps.

She called on the Saudi’s “to provide all the information they have about the case and to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.”

Lawmakers described Saudi explanations about Khashoggi’s death as a “cover-up and a “white-wash.”

6:30 p.m.

Turkish officials say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised family members of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi that Turkey would do all it can “to shed light on the murder.”

The officials said Erdogan on Tuesday called Khashoggi’s son, Abdullah, to express his condolences, and also spoke with other members of his family.

Erdogan told family members that he was “deeply saddened” by his death and that Turkey would follow up the incident. The officials provided the information on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Saudi Arabia has said the journalist, a critic of the Saudi royal family, was killed in a fistfight. Erdogan said earlier Tuesday that he was the victim of a “savage murder” that was planned days ahead.

6:15 p.m.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence says the death of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi “will not go without an American response.”

Pence said CIA Director Gina Haspel is in Turkey reviewing the facts of what Pence called a “brutal murder.” He offered condolences to Khashoggi’s family.

Speaking Tuesday in Washington at an event hosted by The Washington Post, Pence would not elaborate on what a possible U.S. response would be. Khashoggi, a Post contributor, lived in Virginia.

Asked if the U.S. would sanction members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family if they were found to have been complicit, Pence said that’s a decision for President Donald Trump.

He says Trump will make a decision that reflects the values and national security interests of the nation and will “make sure the world knows the truth.”

6 p.m.

Lawmakers in Spain have rejected proposals to halt arms exports to Saudi Arabia after a debate.

Conservative and ruling Socialist lawmakers argued Tuesday that jobs in the defense industry needed to be protected. They rejected non-binding proposals by far-left and smaller parties calling for a weapon export freeze. The pro-business Citizens party abstained.

Spain chose last month not to risk a $2.1 billion contract for five navy frigates in a job-hungry region when it went ahead with a bomb shipment to Saudi Arabia that members of Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist government had tried to stop.

The prime minister is expected to brief lawmakers on the issue on Wednesday.

Western countries have been rethinking their dealings with the Gulf kingdom amid international uproar over the killing of dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul earlier this month.

5:30 p.m.

Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have received the family of killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi and expressed their condolences.

The royals received the journalist’s son, Salah, and his brother, Sahel, at the Yamama Palace in Riyadh on Tuesday. A friend of the Khashoggi family told The Associated Press that Salah has been under a travel ban since last year. The individual spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal.

Prince Mohammed has come under mounting pressure, with critics suspecting he ordered the high-profile operation or at least knew about it. Saudi authorities say they have arrested 18 suspects and dismissed senior officials.

The prince appeared briefly at an afternoon panel Tuesday alongside Jordan’s King Abdullah II, but made no public remarks.

--By Aya Batrawy in Riyadh

4:40 p.m.

The leaders of Sweden and Denmark are reacting after Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saudi Arabia murdered Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi after plotting his death.

Stefan Lofven, Sweden’s acting prime minister, says “it seems very credible that something terrible has happened there, something horrible.”

However, Lofven refrained from commenting further pending more facts, Sweden’s TT news agency reported.

In neighboring Denmark, Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen is summoning the Saudi ambassador and said the meeting would be held “as soon as possible.”

He said, “there are still a lot of unclear questions and I believe it is fair to give the ambassador the possibility to explain himself.”

Samuelsen had earlier said there would be no official Danish participation in an investment conference in Saudi Arabia as “a natural consequence of the actual situation.”

3:15 p.m.

A U.S. official says CIA Director Gina Haspel is in Turkey to review the case of slain Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi. The official was not authorized to discuss the trip and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Haspel’s visit Tuesday comes a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said he was not satisfied with Saudi Arabia’s explanation of Khashoggi’s death three weeks ago in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.

Saudi Arabia said he was killed in a fistfight, but Turkish officials said the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist was attacked and killed by a 15-man Saudi team.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he wants Saudi Arabia to allow 18 suspects that it detained for the journalist’s killing to be tried in Turkish courts.

By Deb Riechmann in Washington, D.C.

1 p.m.

Turkey’s president has urged Saudi Arabia to reveal who ordered the “savage murder” of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul, and said the 18 Saudis suspected of carrying it out should be tried in Turkish courts.

Addressing lawmakers of his ruling party in Parliament Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says all those responsible for the killing must be punished regardless of rank — from the person who ordered his death to those who carried out the killing.

He asked: “where is the body of Jamal Khashoggi?” For the first time, Erdogan also confirmed that a body double of Khashoggi was used as a decoy after he was killed.

Erdogan’s speech came as skepticism intensified about Saudi Arabia’s account that he died accidentally in its consulate in Istanbul.

12:40 p.m.

Turkey’s president says Saudi officials started planning to murder Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi days before his death in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that the Saudi officials began plotting against Khashoggi in late September, days ahead of his disappearance after he entered the consulate on Oct. 2.

Erdogan’s comments contradicted Saudi accounts that Khashoggi died accidentally in a “fistfight” in the consulate.

12:25 p.m.

Saudi Arabia says organizers will be signing deals worth $50 billion at the start of a major economic forum in Riyadh.

The Future Investment Initiative forum, which began on Tuesday, is the brainchild of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It’s aimed at drawing more foreign investment into the kingdom and to help create desperately needed jobs for its youthful population.

The deals will be in manufacturing, transportation and other fields.

Prince Mohammed was not immediately at the forum when it started.

The forum last year proved to be a glitzy affair that drew more international business attention to the kingdom. This year’s event meanwhile has seen business leaders drop out over Khashoggi’s Oct. 2 slaying.

11:10 a.m.

A high-profile economic forum in Saudi Arabia has begun in Riyadh, the kingdom’s first major event on the world stage since the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this month.

The Future Investment Initiative forum, which began on Tuesday, is the brainchild of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It’s aimed at drawing more foreign investment into the kingdom and to help create desperately needed jobs for its youthful population.

Prince Mohammed was not immediately at the forum when it started.

The forum last year proved to be a glitzy affair that drew more international business attention to the kingdom. This year’s event meanwhile has seen many top business leaders and officials drop out over Khashoggi’s Oct. 2 slaying.

10:35 a.m.

Turkey’s foreign minister says his country would cooperate with international bodies if they were to launch an independent probe into the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.

In an interview with state-run Anadolu Agency, Mevlut Cavusoglu also said Tuesday that Turkey has not shared evidence concerning his death at the Saudi consulate with any country but added that there may have been “an exchange of views between intelligence organizations.”

Saudi Arabia has said Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi royal family, was killed Oct. 2 in a “fistfight” with officials sent to encourage him to return to the kingdom. Turkish media and officials say the 59-year-old Washington Post columnist was killed and dismembered by a 15-man Saudi hit squad.

Cavusoglu said: “If a request for an international investigation is made ... we would cooperate.”

10:20 a.m.

The Turkish president is expected to announce details Tuesday of his country’s investigation into the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, as skepticism intensified about Saudi Arabia’s account that he died accidentally in its consulate in Istanbul.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he will “go into detail” about a case that has shocked the world and raised suspicions that a Saudi hit squad planned Khashoggi’s killing after he walked into the consulate on Oct. 2, and then attempted to cover it up.

Top Turkish officials have said Turkey would clarify exactly what happened to Khashoggi and a stream of leaks to national and international media has increased pressure on Saudi Arabia, which is hosting a glitzy investment conference this week that many dignitaries have decided to skip because of the scandal. ”