Continuing on the road in the Africa opening

ADDIS ABABA. After declaring 2005 the "Year of Africa," Turkey began to make a genuine opening toward Africa. Since 2002 it has raised the number of embassies in Africa to 39, and over time it raised its trade volume with Sub-Saharan Africa alone, which had previously been below one billion dollars, to 7.5 billion dollars.

Africa is a continent that is home to some of the fastest-growing economies in the world today. According to IMF data, 64 of the world's 10 fastest-growing countries in 2014 are in Africa. That is why it draws the attention of developed countries in a different way than before. We say different because for today's developed economies Africa was regarded in the past merely as a geography whose rich underground resources were to be exploited.

While the continent's underground and surface resources were being ruthlessly exploited, there was never any concern to contribute even a little to its development. While the developed world was building its welfare societies by exploiting Africa's resources, it did not leave these countries to themselves; by interfering in their governance, their borders, everything about them, it also obstructed their development.

At the same time, it voiced the question "Why did development or progress not take place in the non-Western world but only in Europe?" as if it were a perfectly academic, intellectual question. There is a deviousness, an intention to construct a discourse, that begins with the way the question is asked. And of course it continued to legitimize the colonial relationship by attributing the answer to culture, mentality and religious beliefs.

Today, even if the same developed world continues its same cultural arrogance and its determination to intervene, the world is no longer the old world, and Africa as a whole is going through a serious process of awakening.

As for Turkey, although it views Africa as part of an economic opening, it has not remained within that framework alone but has shown an important difference. With the aid given to Somalia, whose governance and economy had completely collapsed, the country has virtually been rebuilt.

Through TIKA, which has opened 9 offices in all in Africa, importance is attached above all to contributing to the development of the African countries with which relations are established. Thanks to the water wells, agricultural development projects and health services opened in many African countries through both TIKA and civil society organizations, Turkey is making its difference felt in its interest in Africa in a real sense. Indeed, with material aid exceeding 1 billion dollars to the continent, it has come to be among the largest donor countries.

By making the second part of his trip, which followed his recent trip to West Africa, this time to Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan shows once again his insistence on the Africa Opening. With his move as the first and only world leader to go to Somalia at a time when it was struggling with hunger on one side and civil war on the other, Erdoğan established a throne in the hearts not only of the Somali people but of all African peoples. In his speech while receiving an honorary doctorate at Addis Ababa University, he once again expressed Turkey's difference by saying, "Our interest in Africa is not an interest, like that of some, that covets the diamonds and underground riches of this geography. Our interest is above all a humane interest."

The university rector, too, in explaining the reasons for conferring the honorary doctorate on Erdoğan, said that "everyone can accept that, owing to the democratization, human rights and economic development he has achieved in his own country, he has earned the exceptional leadership of Turkey, but that it would also be unjust to limit his leadership only to the reforms he has carried out within his country." According to the rector, Erdoğan's leadership was one that had opened new political horizons not only for Turkey but for all of Africa, and one that was taken into account. Somalia was without doubt the most important country in which this leadership stood out.

The first stop of the trip, Ethiopia, is the only country in Africa that was not directly colonized. It has a deep-rooted history, but ever since the dates when colonialism entered Africa it has never lacked wars and tensions with the countries the colonizers came from, and because of these tensions it has constantly experienced instability. Of course, the most important aspect of its deep-rooted history for Muslims is that it is the Abyssinian land to which the 1st Migration was made.

The Negus, who ruled the country during this Migration, took the Muslims under his protection despite the complaint and demand of the Meccan polytheists, and his famous dialogue with Hazrat Jafar ibn Abi Talib, the representative of the Muslims, is one of the most moving scenes in Islamic history.

The Western world, which markets multiculturalism and religious freedoms as if they were its own inventions, yet innocently asks why such values did not develop in the non-Western world, need only look at the history of Ethiopia, and it would see what it needs to see.

The Negus was a Christian and devout. That is, when he listened to the Prophet and saw him, he belonged to the people who were expected to recognize him as one recognizes one's own child. Although others, when they saw Hazrat Muhammad, truly recognized him as they recognize their own children, they declined to accept him out of their envy and arrogance. Yet the Negus did not hesitate to state that there was not so much as a straw's difference between the message Hazrat Muhammad brought and the message of Hazrat Jesus, and he showed him the respect due.

President Erdoğan, who is visiting today's Abyssinia, Ethiopia, is this time suffering from the lobbying activities and black propaganda against his country by people he himself supported and sent as references from his own country. That the schools opened here with his own support have become centers of activities against Turkey thus becomes one of the agenda items of the visit. We will continue to relay developments on this agenda.