Friday 27 Sep, 2024 {HMC}  Sudan’s de facto ruler said Thursday that he wants to end the war in his country, but he said he will not sit with his rival general unless he withdraws his fighters.

“We are keen on stopping the war and restoring peace and security, without any pre-conditions,” Army Chief Abdel-Fattah al Burhan told reporters in New York, where he was attending U.N. General Assembly meetings.

However, he stated several conditions for talks to start.

“We will never sit with Hemedti unless his forces pull out, and unless they implement what we agreed to,” he said referring to his rival, the head of the Rapid Support Forces, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti.”

Once allies in Sudan’s transitional government following a 2021 coup, the two generals have turned into bitter rivals for power. On April 15, 2023, fighting erupted between their forces in the capital, Khartoum. It has since spread across Sudan, resulting in widespread atrocities and killing.

Burhan was asked about new fighting that erupted between his forces and the RSF in Khartoum on Thursday, but did not offer any new details.

Earlier Thursday, Burhan addressed the U.N. General Assembly annual debate. He used most of his speech to talk about the war in his country. Not to be outdone, his rival, Hemedti, issued a “General Assembly speech” of his own, on the social media platform X.

Ten million people have been displaced and half of Sudan’s population, 26 million people, are struggling with crisis levels of food insecurity. Famine was confirmed in August in Sudan’s Darfur region, which has seen heavy fighting. At least 14 other areas of Sudan are considered at risk of famine in the coming months.

“The food gap is there, but it hasn’t reached the level of famine yet,” Burhan told reporters.

Regarding efforts by the United States and Saudi Arabia to bring the parties to the negotiating table in Switzerland in August, the army chief said it didn’t happen because “external parties interfered” with the process.

The Sudanese military accuses the United Arab Emirates of arming and equipping the RSF. The UAE was invited to a meeting in Switzerland in August and Burhan did not attend.

He said he was also not happy with how the invitation was sent to him – in his personal capacity, not as head of state. He added that any peace process should be purely Sudanese-led.

Asked about a July phone call he had with the leader of the UAE, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Burhan said he told the Emirati that the RSF has received either direct or indirect assistance from the UAE in the forms of weapons and training.

He said MBZ, as the UAE leader is known, “promised to reconsider the situation.”

A report by a U.N. panel of experts earlier this year said there was substance to media reports that cargo planes originating in the UAE capital had landed in eastern Chad with arms, ammunition and medical equipment destined for the RSF.

Publicly, the UAE denies that it arms the RSF and says it has only sent humanitarian aid to Sudan.

SOURCE VOA

Friday 27 Sep, 2024 {HMC}  Turkey’s strategic push into Africa has seen new projects in Somalia recently where Ankara wants to explore offshore oil fields and is planning to improve military cooperation with a new test site for missiles.

Since launching its African Initiative Policy in 1998, Turkey has aimed to strengthen commercial, diplomatic, and security ties with the continent.

The Turkish government is investing “great energy and ambition” to reach its economic goals under the policy, says Volkan Ipek from the private Yeditepe University in Istanbul. Its strategy was aimed at “increasing trade and fostering free-trade agreements,” he told DW. “In this sense, perhaps the most stable and efficient region, or even continent, in terms of foreign policy is Africa.”

In the past two decades, Turkey increased the number of its embassies in Africa from 12 in 2002 to 44 in 2022. Turkey’s flag carrier, Turkish Airlines, flies to 62 African destinations, while 38 African countries have established embassies in Ankara.

Turkey’s growing influence on the continent is reflected by rising trade volumes, which surged from $5.4 billion (€4.85 billion) in 2003 to over $41 billion in 2022 before falling back to $37 billion last year.

What investors from Turkey find most attractive is Africa’s young population and rising demand for goods, which are promising rich economic benefits. But Turkey’s initiatives have to compete against projects launched by China, Russia, and Arab countries in the Gulf region seeking to increase their influence in Africa.

Volkan Ipek believes Africa is developing into a “great market” as its growing economies “aroused such a big interest that Turkey inevitably felt obliged to show itself in this competition.”

In 2011, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was still prime minister at the time, was the first non-African political leader to visit Somalia in two decades. His visit has pushed Ankara’s engagement in Somalia and Africa as a whole.

Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, has become home to Turkey’s largest military base abroad, while several bilateral agreements have been signed in recent months, including closer defense and security cooperation as well as a deal to explore oil fields off the coast of Somalia.

Exploration deals open the door to energy markets

In July, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar signed a so-called Hydrocarbon Exploration and Production agreement with Somalia granting Ankara exclusive rights to explore and produce oil and gas in three blocks off the Somali coast.

Turkey will be sending an exploration vessel to the region at the end of September or early October, Alparslan announced, as geo-seismic studies had shown the country sits on at least 30 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves.

Sohbet Karbuz, director of hydrocarbons and energy security at the Paris-based Mediterranean Observatory for Energy and Climate (OMEC) think tank sees the exploration partnership as a “strategic step” in securing Turkish energy supplies.

“Turkey is on its way to becoming an important player in deep-sea oil and gas exploration. With its four drilling and two seismic research vessels it already has the technical experience,” Karbuz told DW in written comments.

Turkish energy supplies depend about 74% on imports from abroad which is why Ankara is eager to diversify its energy sector. Currently, the country still imports huge amounts of pipeline gas from Russia, Azerbaijan, Algeria and Iran, and buys liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States, Egypt, Russia, France and Nigeria.

“This [exploration agreement with Somalia] shows Turkey’s ambition to find additional energy resources, with planned deals in the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean and the Black Sea further reflecting this ambition,” said Ipek.

Missed targets and weak partners

However ambitious Turkey’s Africa strategy may seem, the country has persistently failed to reach its trade-volume targets with Africa of €50 billion annually. This figure was envisioned for 2012 — four years after the African Union declared Turkey a “strategic partner.” In 2021, Erdogan even announced that trade of $75 billion was now the target for trade with Africa without giving a timeframe for reaching the target.

Ufuk Tepebas, who was a researcher at the University of Basel’s Center for African Studies, says setting targets is one thing, but it is more necessary to “determine the potential of countries and diversify trade partners.”

Turkey has signed free-trade agreements with only four African countries, so far — Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Mauritius. Somalia and Sudan are still primarily receiving Turkish development aid, while bilateral cooperation is mainly focused on Turkey’s close religious and historical ties with the two countries.

Tepebas, therefore, calls on Ankara to “analyze correctly” when choosing its African trade partners. “The potential of Somalia and Sudan in terms of trade is very weak. If you had preferred to support Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Kenya, you would probably get bigger commercial returns,” Tepebas told DW.

Security cooperation to back up investment projects

Turkey is also establishing itself as a key security partner for several African nations. The Turkish parliament has recently approved legislation deploying its military in Somalia for two years in effort to improve domestic security against terrorism.

“The defense cooperation is likely to develop further as the number of incidents requiring weapons increase. Since 2011, Jihadist terrorists have been active and playing a major role in the Sahel region,” said Ipek.

According to data published by the SIPRI peace research institute in Sweden, Turkey has become the fourth-largest arms supplier to sub-Saharan Africa, due to its sales of combat helicopters to Nigeria, and training aircraft as well as unmanned TB2 Bayraktar drones to several African states.

Apart from selling arms to Africa, Turkey has also launched massive civil investments there. According to Trade Minister Ömer Bolat, altogether 1,864 projects have been completed over the past few decades, with Turkish investments totaling $85.4 billion. Turkish construction company Yapi Merkezi, for example, won a contract recently worth $2.35 billion to upgrade the railway network in Tanzania.

However, Turkish companies are struggling to compete with Chinese firms, notably in securing the necessary financing of large projects, says Tepebas. “The Chinese state directly supports its companies through its Exim Bank. Turkish companies cannot get the same support from their banks, and even if they do, the amounts are not comparable.”

In 2023 alone, Chinese investments in Africa reached a total of $282 billion. By comparison, Turkey’s investment to date has been around $10 billion.

Volkan Ipek thinks that Turkey’s engagement in Africa falls behind Russia’s politically and China’s economically. “Instead of focussing mainly on imports and exports, Turkey should invest more and undertake some mega projects,” he said and named the so-called Medusa project as a good example — a submarine fiber-optic cable in the Mediterranean that will link northern Africa with southern Europe and is being built without Turkey.