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Paper short abstract:

In the shadow of crumbling empires, vanguards of the Turkish foreign policy collect the crumbs of another empire long gone in the African Sahel. This presentation analyses how the origin myth of the Agadez Sultanate is co-opted and its genealogical claims become evidence of Ottoman heritage.

Paper long abstract:

In the shadow of crumbling empires, the vanguards of Turkish foreign policy in Africa south of the Sahara collect the crumbs of another empire long gone to blow new life into it. This presentation analyses how the origin myth of the Agadez Sultanate is co-opted by the Turkish foreign-policy making and its genealogical claims become evidence of Ottoman heritage in the region. The oral tradition traces the genealogy of the Tuareg Sultanate in today’s Republic of Niger to the 15th century Ottoman dynasty. This myth of origin is being invoked and reworked today to signal the imagined racial kinship between the Tuaregs and Turks, the forgotten Ottoman legacy in the Sahel, and the latent potential for economic cooperation between the two countries. As the Sultanate’s origin myth becomes an object of fascination in Turkey, its political, racial and genealogical meanings were coopted. From an outdated justification of the Tuareg Sultan’s political and religious authority through patrilineal lineage to the Ottoman Sultan, the myth has been recycled to serve as evidence of contemporary Nigeriens’ loyalty to the Turkish nation, justifying therefore diverse forms of intervention in the continent. In this presentation, I discuss the new meanings the genealogical myth has acquired in the context of the neo-Ottomanism, the connections between the current racial ideology of Islamic egalitarianism and the scientific racism of the early twentieth century, and the ways in which they reinforce the government’s neoliberal agenda.