Turkey Discovers Sub-Saharan Africa: The Critical Role of Agents in the Construction of Turkish Foreign-Policy Discourse.

Turkey is in the process of formulating its new foreign-policy discourse on Sub-Saharan Africa. The emerging discourse is reaching for old themes like Ottomanism and Islamic humanitarianism, and for newer themes such as “the trading-state.” The Turkish experience of Sub-Saharan Africa is not rich, and hence the reliance of actors on themes developed in geographical regions quite other than Sub-Saharan Africa. Typically in the early stages of such discourse, its themes reflect images of the major actors more than the realities. As actors' understanding of a subject area improves, the early themes of a discourse are necessarily adjusted to accommodate the issues that emerge in that area. Adjustment happens also in response to various agents' critical commentaries. It is, therefore, a foregone conclusion that the foreign-policy discourse on Sub-Saharan Africa that has emerged so far will undergo constant adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]