Iranian and Turkish Power Projection and Influence in Africa

Editor’s note: This chapter excerpt appears in the book, “Great Power Competition: The Changing Landscape of Global Geopolitics” published by Army University Press in November, 2020.

A scramble for Africa is underway. While global and regional powers like China, India, and to some extent the European Union and Great Britain have competed economically across the continent in the twenty-first century, Iran and Turkey saw Africa as fertile ground to exploit for their own ideological and national interests. Nevzat Çiçek, a Turkish journalist close to the Erdogan government, was blunt: “Although for Turkish society, Africa may seem irrelevant at first glance, the continent is actually the biggest area of struggle in the U.S. and China rivalry. . . . Turkey aims to find a place for itself in this power struggle.”1 In many ways, Turkey’s outreach into Africa has been even more calculated and effective than that of the United States.

While Iran has been largely hostile to the United States and, more broadly, the West since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Turkey has traditionally associated with the West. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk consciously sought to reorient Turkey, going so far as to change Turkey’s alphabet and mandate Western dress. Turkey joined the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952 and aspired to join the European Union and solidify its own democracy. While Turkish diplomats still paid lip service to European Union accession and democracy, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan consolidated control, promoting Islamism and rule without democratic constraints.

The degree of Turkey’s anti-Western and Islamist turn has been apparent in the scramble for Africa. Today both Tehran and Ankara have largely pursued the same objectives: acquiring diplomatic support to oppose the West in multilateral organizations, gaining logistical hubs to service or base militaries, securing uranium supplies to fuel nuclear ambitions, and, increasingly, proselytizing as they seek to export their own religious worldviews. They do so with the overarching goal to undermine US and more broadly Western influence within Africa

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