Date: Thursday 6 October 2011 Time: 15.30-17.00 Venue: Room 3A06, Pieter de la Court building, Wassenaarseweg 52,
Leiden
Speakers: Abdurrahim Siradag, PhD student at the Institute of
Political Science, Leiden University You are kindly requested to register for this seminar.
Turkey’s economic and political relations with Africa have increased
significantly since it announced 2005 as ‘The Year of Africa’. It
subsequently opened fifteen new embassies in Africa in 2008 and has
strengthened its institutional relations with the African Union (AU),
the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the
Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). For its part, the AU
declared Turkey a strategic partner in 2008, having granted it observer
status at the AU in 2005. Turkey organized the first ever Africa-Turkey
Summit in Istanbul in August 2008 and both Turkey and Africa accepted a
‘Cooperation Framework for a Turkey-Africa Partnership’ during the
summit. Turkey has been playing an active role in UN peacekeeping
operations in Africa. This seminar will explore the internal and
external driving forces behind Turkey’s changing foreign policy towards
Africa.
Abdurrahim Siradag is a PhD student at the Institute of Political
Science, Leiden University, the Netherlands, and is completing his
thesis on the strategic security partnership between Africa and the EU.
He finished his MA in 2009 at the University of Johannesburg, South
Africa, with a dissertation entitled ‘Cooperation between the African
Union and the European Union With Regard to Peacemaking and Peacekeeping
in Africa’. His research activities concentrate on security in Africa,
conflict prevention, the global actors’ security policy in Africa and
their institutional relations with African organizations. He has visited
several African countries, including Malawi, Swaziland, Lesotho,
Mozambique and Madagascar, on humanitarian relief programmes, and has
done extensive research in South Africa.
Printable version