Benevolence or Selfishness: Understanding the Increasing Role of Turkish NGOs and Civil Society in Africa
Turkey has changed its policy in Africa since 2005 and developed a more active role to cement its political, economic and social relations with African countries. For instance, while Turkey had only 12 embassies around the continent in 2002, it now has 35. Its economic relations with Africa have also increased significantly over the past decade. Although its total trade was 2 billion dollars in 2002, it boomed to 22 billion dollars in 2013. Turkish non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations have also boosted their humanitarian activities in Africa. They have established hospitals, mosques, orphanages, schools and colleges, opened water wells and provided free cataract surgeries. This article will examine why Turkish NGOs and civil society organisations have increased their humanitarian assistance in Africa since 2002. The research will also uncover the main motivations to the increasing role of Turkish NGOs and civil society organisations on the continent of Africa.
From Mogadishu to Buenos Aires: The Global South in the Turkish Foreign Policy in the Late JDP Period (2011–2017)
As regards the southern dimension of the Turkish foreign policy, this chapter aims to analyze the Turkish agenda for the Global South. First, it presents a historical and conceptual scheme about the role of the Global South in the foreign policy, explaining the late humanitarian and developmental involvement. Next, it presents the main tenets of this new dimension of the foreign policy through the analysis of two case studies: sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The aim of the work is to introduce the Turkish policy toward the Global South, focusing on how the southern dimension can contribute to Turkey’s ambition of becoming a global actor in the context of the shifting global governance.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1