Turkey Enters Foreign Aid Business

Turkey Enters Foreign Aid Business

By Ayla Albayrak

As Turks returned Monday from a month of fasting and holidays over Ramadan, their government proudly declared the amount of aid they had gathered together to send to fellow Muslims in Somalia: More than $237 million.

Aid campaigns are commonplace during Muslims’ holy fasting month Ramadan, in line with Islamic principles of charity, sadaka, to poorer fellow Muslims. And Somalia is suffering from a severe humanitarian crisis caused by draught and decades-long political conflict, so the aid was timely.

Reuters

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, top, and his wife, Emine Erdogan, visit a camp for displaced people in Mogadishu last month.

But the scale of the government campaign and of the money raised was unusual for Turkey, which despite being one of the fastest-growing economies in the world can still be considered a developing country by many standards. Until recently, it had a rather small budget for foreign aid.

The Somalia campaign was promoted personally by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who also visited Somalia in August. He was followed by the main opposition party’s leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Huge Somalia posters covered buildings in main Turkish cities, and images of starved children filled Turkish TV screens as most of Turkey’s mainstream media flocked to the country to document the aid effort.

“Our work to send aid to the friend- and brother-nation of Somalia will continue by land and sea,” the prime minister’s emergency management agency, AFAD, said in a statement Monday.

More than Muslim principles of brotherhood are at work here. Last year, President Abdullah Gul spelled out Turkey’s ambition to raise its foreign aid game, boosting its aid budget above $1 billion as it sent support to Japan, Haiti, Pakistan, Palestine and Sudan, among others.

“A great country,” Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul said, “used to be evaluated according to its GDP, its income per capita and its purchasing power parity. But actually, true greatness means being able to aid other countries in need in the name of humanity without waiting for anything in return.”

Turkey has made no secret of its desire to increase its influence in the Middle East and Muslim Africa, much of which used to be administered by the Ottoman empire until its collapse early last century. Last year Turkey said it was increasing the number of its embassies in Africa to 30 from a dozen. Turkey also became a member of the African Development Bank.

Turkey’s generosity isn’t so apparent when it comes to welcoming Somali refugees, though. Turkey only accepts asylum applications from European citizens. Those Somalis allowed to stay in Turkey while they complete applications for asylum in other countries aren’t allowed to stay in cities. They are sent to provincial Anatolian towns to wait.

via Turkey Enters Foreign Aid Business – Emerging Europe Real Time – WSJ.