No Strings Attached: Understanding Turkey’s Arms Exports to Africa

ABSTRACT

Turkey’s defence industries have shown significant development in recent years. But the limited domestic market and the financial crisis created sustainability problems for the industry. To increase its arms sales, Turkey began to search for potential markets to expand, and Africa emerged as an excellent market to enter. Turkey had already invested in Africa through its multi-track diplomacy, a necessary condition for arms sales. While the multi-track diplomacy and increased engagement helped Turkey’s arms exports, they are insufficient to explain the recent rise of Turkish arms exports, which have been showing an upward trend since 2021. This paper argues that the increase in arms exports is the function of multi-track diplomacy, no-strings-attached arms export policy and the demonstration effect.

KEYWORDS:

• defence industry
• arms export
• military diplomacy, Africa

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Rıdvan Doğan for his support of the research and Bahar Başer Öztürk, Elem Eyrice Tepeciklioğlu and Francois Vrey for the valuable feedback on the previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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[106] Ibid.

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