Sudan was awaiting Erdoğan with longing

At the end of one of my visits to Sudan, which I visited several times on several occasions during the year we are in, I had written the following in a piece I published:

The Sudanese people's affection for Turkey, for Turks and especially for our President Erdoğan is beyond description. While they show this on every occasion, the government and the opposition make no difference in this regard. This love we see is Turkey's greatest strength. However, it is unfortunately not possible to say that Turkey has a material presence, attention and policy commensurate with this moral power it holds here.

In fact, when we think about it, we can see that Sudan today holds many of the possibilities and potential that Turkey needs. Turkey had adopted its opening to Africa as a strategic policy, but in this opening it cannot make sufficient use of Sudan, one of the most important centers whether logistically, politically or in terms of human resources. And this although Sudan has opened all its doors and all its possibilities to Turkey to the fullest.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's visit to Sudan was a visit that the Sudanese, government and opposition together as one, had been awaiting for years with longing, yearning and great eagerness, precisely to fill the gap I described above.

The enthusiastic welcome displayed along the road from the airport all the way to the hotel was an expression of the deepest affection. In fact, in the great majority of Arab countries, a very deep respect and affection for Turkey and President Erdoğan is felt among the people. But it is not so possible to say that in other places the people and the rulers harbor the same feelings.

In many Arab countries the deep sympathy the people feel for Erdoğan is watched with concern by the ruling elites and nationalist intellectuals, and they do not hesitate to use the media outlets they control in the ugliest ways to shake this affection deeply.

Despite this, when it comes to Erdoğan, a deep difference arises between what the media write and what the people see and feel. What is written in the media is certainly not what the peoples of those countries feel. For example, it is said that the UAE dominates a great many Arab media outlets. But it is not possible for Muhammad bin Zayed to mingle confidently among the people and walk in any Arab street or avenue.

Among the Arab peoples, men such as Muhammad bin Zayed and his men, Dahlan, Sisi and Haftar have become objects of utter anger and hatred. But Erdoğan can enter any Arab street he wishes with ease, with the guarantee that he will be met with a flood of utter enthusiasm and love. While this shows that the new Middle East project the UAE has been trying to create went bankrupt from the start, it also shows why the UAE has recently been attacking Endoğan.

However, the more UAE officials attack Erdoğan, the more they lose, the more their legitimacy before their own peoples is shaken, and they are increasingly engraved in minds and consciences as the villainous figures of their own peoples.

Although what we have said holds for the whole Arab world, what we saw in Sudan was something quite different. There you immediately notice that the rulers share the same feelings as their people. Indeed, contrary to the image that is tried to be attributed to Sudan from outside, in Sudan there is a peace between people and rulers that is not encountered at all in other Arab countries. For years, the great majority of the images of turmoil reflected from this country were manifestations of a dirty war conducted by outside provocations and intrigues.

In South Sudan, which is somewhat non-Muslim and where the oil is located, some tribes were armed and incited and made to break away. This breakaway was completed in 2011, as a result of a referendum, with a partition in which 75 percent of the country's oil remained on the Southern side, where the Christian minority also lives.

The same game was attempted in Darfur too, but since South Sudan blew up in their hands, the intensity of the game over Darfur has recently diminished. But as a result of all these processes, Sudan was made to be always portrayed as a land of civil war and problems. Omar Bashir was convicted by the UN International Criminal Court and an arrest warrant was issued for him. And for twenty years Sudan was condemned to live in complete isolation.

The US, which continued inhuman racial discrimination practices in its own country until the sixties, evidently has not lost, even though these practices have ended in its own country, its narcissistic pleasure in cruelty against the innocent black race.

Because of the embargo applied to Sudan, for more than twenty years Sudan has been condemned to poverty and backwardness and deprived of basic development needs. Using as a pretext its leader, convicted by disputed courts, a whole people was thus punished. Because of this embargo Sudan was left far behind the world's development course for years. Meanwhile many children and adults died because they could not be treated. This embargo, carried out under US leadership, only punished innocent people.

These days, as the embargo is being lifted, Sudan is a rediscovered geography for international companies. A complete land of opportunities. It was realized after the separation took place that its underground resources are far greater than those in the South. Moreover, the oil that remained on the Southern side cannot be sufficiently exploited because of the civil war that subsequently broke out there.

Turkey's interest in Sudan was necessary first of all as a humanitarian interest. Even in the embargo years, Turkey did not withhold this interest from Sudan.

Both for this reason, and from the affection for Erdoğan, and of course because of Sudan's different bond with Turkey since the Ottomans, the real interest and investments are expected from Turkey.

Our President's visit to Sudan, awaited with longing for years, will open a new horizon both for Sudan and for Turkey. Bismillah...