What is happening in Sudan is not limited to Sudan

The Israeli genocide, which continues in its 7th month with all its savagery and insolence, overshadows other problems in different regions of the world that are in fact taking place as a manifestation of the same world order. Certainly the genocide in Gaza is currently the world's most important issue, and one must remain sensitive to any attempt that would push this issue into second place. But while we are occupied with this issue, other injustices, occupations and partitions, which may well be extensions of the same issue, are taking place in different regions of the world.

What is happening in East Turkestan, in Myanmar, in India, in Kashmir may even be able to draw legitimacy for itself from Israel's genocide.

And what about what is happening in Sudan? There was no one who had not heard that the expansion program Israel launched long before 7 October focused especially on Sudan. But very few have heard that the forces opposed to Omar al-Bashir and planning a new partition of Sudan have been stationed for many years with their offices and activities in Tel Aviv. Yet one of the most important acts of the council that governed Sudan in the chaotic situation that came immediately after Omar al-Bashir was to begin taking steps toward normalization with Israel.

Israel is very skilled at drawing maximum profit from chaotic situations in the Islamic world. The communists within the Forces of Freedom and Change, which overthrew Omar al-Bashir on the pretext of economic crisis and lack of democracy, had somehow managed to hold the greatest say in the Front even though they had no support among the people. When Abdalla Hamdok, who had been sent from abroad, took office as prime minister, instead of fixing the economic situation he immediately began to establish a complete 28 February regime and to fight with Islam through strict secularist policies, and in the face of the people's truly democratic reaction he left the country. Thus the Forces of Freedom and Change, supported by the US, Britain, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, collapsed within a short time.

Last week, in Yeni Şafak's Düşünce Günlüğü, Mehmet Nedim Aslan's long article conveyed very nicely, in all its details, the behind-the-scenes story of the crisis that has been experienced in Sudan until now.

In the end we can say that the first, second and third acts of the games that the Gulf countries and the US-Israel and Britain wanted to stage in Sudan have ended in failure. Both the Sudanese people and Sudan's current political elite have arrived at the point that it would be better for Sudan to make greater use of opportunities to act independently against the games of outside powers over Sudan. Last January, Sudan's representative to the UN openly accused the UAE of supporting with weapons and money Hemetti, who is the cause of the instability in Sudan, and warned it.

But the moment they understood this, they began to put into effect another plot being woven over Sudan, a plan aimed at dragging the country they could not govern into instability and making it ungovernable. Hemetti, at the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whom they had recruited earlier and incited by treating him almost as the de facto president of Sudan, raised the banner of revolt around this time last year and, with the Janjaweed tribes in the capital's administration, seized regions such as Darfur, the capital Khartoum, and Omdurman.

What we call "seized" is in fact these forces invading every place they entered by burning, destroying and plundering. Otherwise Hemetti has neither the aptitude nor the intention to govern the country. In any case, the only thing he promises the fighters under his command is nothing other than the spoils they will seize in the invaded regions. He has neither a plan nor an intention to see Sudan as a whole, to develop it, and to provide its people with livelihood and security. That is why he can keep the fighters under his command only until the end of the plunder. Indeed, most of these fighters, who sense that there is nothing left to plunder, return to where they came from. But until they go back they also carry out the destruction, massacres, rapes and seizures they will carry out.

The greatest mistake of those who follow Sudan is that they assume there are two equal parties of comparable strength fighting each other in a dispute. Yet what exists is a state administration which, in a long transition period, the people have somehow united around, which has granted it a legitimate period for the transitional administration, and which has legitimacy with its institutions and civil society organizations, and against this administration there is one person who has launched a revolt using militia forces based on tribal relations, most of them brought in from abroad. Moreover, this person is one of the chief actors in all the crimes against humanity attributed to Omar al-Bashir in the Darfur crisis, which was long on the agenda of the International Criminal Court.

Unfortunately, in this revolt led by Hemetti, the only concern of the Janjaweed he has gathered around him is spoils and plunder. This plundering force serves only to destroy the country; it has not the slightest plan, project or vision to rebuild it. In the last year, in the lands they invaded, they plundered everything that came before them and was worth a little money, killed civilians at random, raped women, and dragged the country into complete chaos. By contrast, the number of fighters with whom they first set out has quickly dwindled, falling to nearly twenty percent. Recently, with a new move by the Armed Forces, Omdurman, the most populous city they had previously invaded, has been liberated from these invaders, and the Armed Forces have stepped up their operations to liberate also the Gezira region between the two Niles and Khartoum.

One thing we must not forget about Sudan is that the country's dragging into instability in 2018 came immediately after Erdoğan's visit, which resonated throughout Africa and the world, only one year earlier. It would not be an exaggeration at all to say that all the events that followed are connected to this visit. Collaborationist actors in the region, Israel first of all, perceived this initiative of Türkiye as a threat to themselves. Now too, the first priority of all the actors involved is that Sudan not be left to itself, that it be dragged into instability, and in particular that it be kept away from the role of Türkiye's most solid ally in Africa.

Sudan is not a place from which Türkiye can watch impartially from afar and say, whoever does whatever, we will make a deal and work with the winner. One must not forget, or rather must see, that what is happening there directly targets Türkiye, Palestine and the Islamic world.