by Martin Aslan With the arrival in power in 2002 of the AKP and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a new strategy was put into place to enable Türkiye to develop its ties with Africa. The Gülen movement, an ally at the time, was the first non-governmental organization to invest massively in Africa. This opportunistic alliance enabled Türkiye to strengthen its influence on the continent. However, this alliance broke in 2013, leaving a very significant pro-Gülen imprint to the detriment of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan 's power. Turkish soft power has been transformed and strengthened by TIKA (Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency), which became a state agency in 2018, and by the creation of the MAARIF foundation (a state-run organization focused on international education) in 2016. Numerous humanitarian NGOs gravitate around these two major organizations. The difference from before is that the government has now much tighter control over these institutions. TIKA, a multi-skilled state a...