Ankara’s promotion of its UAVs on the African arms market played a major role in strengthening Turkish influence on the continent. The Bayraktar TB2 model, which, with a wingspan of 12 metres and a flight time of 27 hours, carrying 4 laser-guided missiles, has become not only a symbol of Turkish weaponry in many parts of the world, but has also become an effective tool of Turkish foreign policy.
Not least of these successes is due to the fact that one of the heads of Baykar Makina, the firm that produces these drones, is President Erdoğan’s son-in-law Selçuk Bayraktar, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose father was its creator.
The attractiveness of Turkish drones in the eyes of African buyers is due to the fact that they have already demonstrated their high technical performance in a number of combat areas, including in Africa.
In Libya in 2019, the armed forces of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord used these drones to stop Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s troops from advancing on the Libyan capital in less than 10 days and then forcing them to retreat after a year-long siege of the city. At the same time, the fighters of the already mentioned Turkish PMC Sadat were engaged in targeting these vehicles.
Apart from their high efficiency, these drones are relatively easy to operate and much cheaper than some Western designs. For example, the Bayraktar TB2 costs around $5 million, while the US MQ-9 Reaper costs $20 million and the more advanced US Protector RG Mk1 costs 28 million. Unlike other low-cost models, such as the Chinese Wing Loong, Turkish models are in higher demand.
Turkey strengthens its geopolitical interests with drones
The supply of drones, as well as aircraft, often leads to longer-term partnerships with buyers. This is due to the provision of spare parts, ammunition, training for maintenance personnel and other technical assistance.
As experts at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security note, Ankara, based solely on its pragmatic interests, is behaving like a traditional Turkish merchant in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, who tries his best to please the customer and turn him into a regular customer.
Thanks to drone diplomacy, Turkey has been able to seriously strengthen its relations with a number of African countries, particularly Morocco, where it has significant economic and geopolitical interests. Rabat’s purchase of 12 Bayraktar TB2 drones in 2021 has radically shifted the balance of power in its favour against the Polisario Front, which is fighting for national independence in Western Sahara with the support of Algeria and Mauritania.
This is one of the evidences of the unprincipled foreign policy of Ankara, which is based on the defence of the selfish interests of Turkish corporations, primarily engaged in the production of armaments.
According to incomplete data from France’s Le Monde, not counting other drone models, Turkey has delivered more than 40 Bayraktar TB2-type products to 10 African countries between 2019 and January this year. Their buyers included countries such as Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Libya, Mali, Morocco (worth $69.6 million), Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Togo, Tunisia (worth $80 million) and Ethiopia.
At the same time, Tunisia, Nigeria and Chad purchased Anka-S type drones from another Turkish firm, which are used by the air force as well as for radio-technical reconnaissance. In September 2022, Nigeria purchased Sonqar-type drones from Turkey to fight Boko Haram jihadists, followed by Bayraktar TB2 and several Turkish helicopters in October the same year. Moreover, in March 2023, Turkey and Nigeria held preliminary talks to build an Anka-S drone production facility in Nigeria.
Ankara is pushing its naval hardware into coastal African countries
Ankara’s military co-operation with Tunisia can testify to the effectiveness of drone diplomacy. The fact is that for the past 50 years, the Tunisian armed forces have been equipped only with French and American-made weapons. The defence agreement signed in 2017 between the two countries provided not only for the supply of military equipment, but also for the transfer of technology for its production with the training of Tunisian military personnel in Turkey. Moreover, Ankara provided Tunisia with several interest-free loans totalling about $150 million for the purchase of its weapons until 2021.
Having gained experience in modernising the navy of its closest ally Qatar, to which Turkish shipyards have supplied modern ships of various classes in recent years, Ankara has begun to promote its naval equipment to coastal African countries as part of its gunboat policy.
According to Turkish publication Railly News, Turkey’s Anadolu Shipyard signed a contract with an unnamed African country in July 2022 to supply two landing ships over two years.
Having become a major buyer of Turkish drones and armoured vehicles, according to the German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Rabat has begun to consider buying Turkish Goturk corvettes and T-129 ATAK helicopters.
A concrete achievement in that regard was also the conclusion of an agreement with Somalia on 8 February this year to transfer to Turkey the protection of Somali territorial waters for a period of 10 years under the guise of combating pirates attacking fishing and merchant vessels.
The agreement provides for the joint utilisation of the maritime resources of Somalia’s exclusive economic zone, known for its fishery wealth. As payment for these services, Ankara will receive 30 per cent of the fishing revenues in the area, which will be a great help to its budget.
Both President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre said that Ankara has undertaken to take an active part in building the Somali navy within the next decade, both by training its personnel and equipping it with ship equipment.
After the ratification of this agreement in the Somali Parliament, it became clear that Turkey had achieved almost unlimited powers to secure Somali territorial waters.
In particular, the British publication Middle East Eye, citing data from the Turkish Ministry of Defence, does not rule out that in fulfilling its obligations under this treaty Ankara may go for the establishment of its own naval base in the northern regions of Somalia in order to relieve some of the burden from the general-purpose military base near Mogadishu.
As Turkish portal Politics Today recognises, the conclusion of this agreement is fully within the framework of Turkey’s strategy in recent years, according to which any crisis should be maximised in the interests of Turkey’s foreign policy.
When Ankara sided with Qatar during the Gulf crisis in 2017, the publication notes, this gave it the opportunity to establish its military base in Doha and strengthen its position in the region.
Thus, even today, having sided with Mogadishu in the Ethiopia-Somalia conflict, the conclusion of a defence agreement with Somalia on 8 February this year gives Turkey the opportunity to expand its military presence in the country, up to and including the establishment of a new base for its air force and new facilities for the Turkish navy.
Ankara’s policy in Somalia and in the Horn of Africa in general cannot be seen in isolation from its relations with NATO, which have been characterised by a recent easing of tensions. Proceeding from its purely pragmatic interests, Turkey has in fact assumed the main burden of ensuring its security, training its military personnel and equipping its armed forces, with the participation of the United States and some European countries in this process.
Despite the fact that relations between the U.S. and Turkey are not always smooth, according to experts of the German Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, Washington took a positive attitude to Ankara’s establishment of military bases on the territory of Libya and the increase in sales of Turkish weapons to African countries, because in fact it leads to a kind of “downgrading game” of the role of China and Russia in this process, especially when these sales are accompanied by the transfer of technology for its production.
And this activity of Ankara in the African direction finds understanding and support in the U.S. Congress. According to Senator Lindsey Graham, Ankara’s growing presence in West Africa could serve as a counterbalance to China’s growing influence there, which in turn creates prerequisites for new areas of cooperation between Turkey and the United States. Given the new trends in U.S.-Turkish relations, it is to be expected that Turkish activity on the Black Continent could increase significantly.
Viktor GONCHAROV, African expert, Candidate of Economic Sciences, especially for online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
