horn of africa
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday confirmed that his country had launched an aid campaign to help four East African countries currently hit by an acute drought. According to Erdogan, Turkey’s effort was aimed at helping Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, all of who are "at risk of suffering a major humanitarian crisis." "We cannot afford to turn a blind eye to requests for help from those countries where the drought-related hunger has reached critical levels," he said in a tweet.
Indisputably, as Kenya edges closer to its middle power ambition, its new frontier of influence does not lie in a Spartan projection of its military prowess – although military might is sometimes crucial. It rests on carefully weaving the technologies of “Athenian soft power” associated with humanitarian diplomacy. To be sure, humanitarian response capacity is an integral component of the development agenda of many developing countries. It also enables countries to project their soft power regionally and globally.
The Turkish government's obsession with becoming a global power is providing a study in contrasts: While Turkey has been using civilian planes to transport weapons to Nigeria, it also is employing navy combat vessels to hand out humanitarian assistance in Africa.