Exploring the Maritime Nexus in Turkey’s African Agenda

Turkey is labelled an emerging middle power and aspiring to play a more visible role in world affairs with Africa as one prominent region where Turkey expanded its diplomatic presence. Turkey’s growing presence in Africa unfolds along hard and soft diplomatic endeavours with each avenue featuring its own objectives and set of policy instruments to pursue Turkish foreign policy goals. Overall, the countries featuring within Turkey’s Africa policy drive include several coastal states like Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Nigeria, and Libya. While Libya represents an aggressive Turkish response, other coastal states like Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea receive security sector support encased in softer capacity building terms. On balance, demarcating and describing the maritime and naval avenues of Turkey’s diplomacy and how Africa features in this shift are underplayed in the growing body of literature on Turkey’s African agenda. To this end, Turkey’s security objectives, the use of its military assets, and mixing soft and hard diplomatic instruments offer scope to also explore the maritime security, and naval diplomacy avenues of Turkey’s interests in Africa.