Turkey's efforts to broaden its presence in Africa through trade and investment moved forward April 11, when Senegal established a business council with the republic. On April 9, Kenya opened an embassy in Ankara and signed several agreements on trade and security cooperation. However, the growing conflict between Fethullah Gulen's religious network known as the Hizmet movement and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party has the potential to damage or even reverse potential gains in Africa. This developing rift prompted Erdogan to order Turkish schools run by the Gulen movement overseas to be shut down. Problematically, Hizmet nongovernmental organizations and schools have over time become the main conduit for Turkish "soft power," enabling Ankara to establish and maintain relations with African states.
Turkey's activity in Africa over the past decade, most notably in East Africa in recent years, has largely depended on Hizmet organizations providing humanitarian aid, education and health care. This presence has enabled many deals such as trade agreements, direct investment by Turkish industry, support in the United Nations and even security cooperation between Turkey and African countries. As a result, there has been a 527 percent increase in the value of Turkish exports to sub-Saharan Africa and a 189 percent increase in the value of imports over the last decade. The percentage of Turkish exports to sub-Saharan Africa has also doubled in the past 10 years.
Turkish schools run by the Gulen movement in Africa often provide a higher standard of education than local schools and are seen by African leaders as a good method of educating the future elite. The global Hizmet school system is also an important source of revenue for the Gulen movement, which is one of the reasons Erdogan's Justice and Development Party perceives it as a threat. Unlike Azerbaijan and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, where Turkey maintains deeper strategic interests, African countries with weaker ties to Ankara will be more reluctant to give up the developmental assistance they have received from Hizmet.
