Turkey Loses an Ally
The April 11 military coup that ousted Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir after 30 years of Islamist rule seems to have the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan extremely worried. The Turkish government, in its attempts to prop up Bashir's ailing government, had invested heavily in Sudan. The ouster of Bashir, after months-long protests, has thrown the cooperation between the Turkish and Sudanese regimes in intelligence, economics and military, among other matters, into uncertainty.
Turkey was one of the few countries
that had amicable relations with the Bashir regime. Both states shared sympathies for
the Muslim Brotherhood. Bashir belonged to the Islamic Movement, which then
became the main component of Sudan's ruling party, and was seen as
Sudan's equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood. His political affiliations,
as listed by
the Sudanese Tribune, were with the Muslim Brotherhood,
the National Islamic Front and the National Congress Party.