The AKP administration brought a new vision to this initiative, one which aims to fill the gap which emerged after nearly a century of negligence.

- 18 / 08 / 2008 11:13

Erdal Safak

Turkey's push to open the door to Africa, which is one of the most important initiatives of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, will be crowned with a summit begin in Istanbul today. The Turkish-African Summit, organized under a decision taken by the Organization for African Unity (OAU), will be a milestone in our relations with Africa, as Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said. Turkey's interest in Africa dates from the end of the 1990s. An action plan on Africa was prepared back in 1998 at the initiative of late Foreign Minister Ismail Cem. The AKP administration brought a new vision to this initiative, one which aims to fill the gap which emerged after nearly a century of negligence.

The framework of this vision, which aims at a strong, steady presence in Africa, is as follows:

1. Implementing the mission of a former empire (the Ottoman Empire had a presence in Africa).

2. Work to promote a humanitarian and peaceful world order and ensure a broad global consensus.

3. Prove Turkey's claim to be a global actor.

4. Bringing Turkey to the center of such areas as production, investment, technology, innovation, finance, energy and tourism on the global scale. (Note: Babacan covered these principles in detail in his speech to last month's meeting of Turkish diplomats in Ankara.)

This vision began to become reality this year when Turkey got observer status in the OAU and became a shareholder in the African Development Bank and began to spread its relations in North Africa to the entire continent. This gave our trade with African countries a great momentum. The goal is to boost Turkey's trade volume with Africa from $13 billion (last year) to $50 billion in 2012.

Above all, Turkey was declared a strategic partner by the OAU. This status is hardly ever given: only China, South Korea, Japan, the European Union, Latin America and Turkey have gotten it. Requests from the US and Canada are still undecided. What's more, Turkey is being welcomed more warmly than other partners, because we have no intention of overrunning the continent's resources or exploiting its cheap labor force. We also have no plan to become a party to plans to colonize or enslave it. We only want to walk towards solidarity and partnership for a common future with African countries. We hope that this difference in Turkey's stance will be stressed in the declaration issued at the end of the summit so it serves as a model for the international community.

Our only concern is that this summit, which comes after intensive preparation by diplomats and others, will be overshadowed by one of its guests, namely Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir. We're concerned, because International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has requested an arrest warrant for al-Bashir on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. For months the Western press has been saying that al-Bashir may or should be arrested in Istanbul, his first trip abroad since Moreno-Ocampo called for his arrest. But this speculation is baseless, for the following reasons: