Erdoğan Courts Another West African Capital: Türkiye Deepens Ties With Liberia

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hosted Liberian President Joseph Nyuma Boakai in Istanbul for bilateral talks, the latest entry in a fast-thickening file of Türkiye's outreach to West African states this year one that now stretches from Accra to Abuja to Monrovia.

What Was Discussed
The two leaders met at the Vahdettin Pavilion, with Türkiye's Head of Communications Burhanettin Duran and Erdoğan's chief foreign policy and security adviser, Akif Çağatay Kılıç, also present. According to Türkiye's Directorate of Communications, Erdoğan said it would be beneficial for the two countries to continue taking steps toward realising the full potential of their bilateral trade volume, and pledged that Ankara would work to strengthen cooperation with Liberia across the defence industry, security, education, and transportation the same sectoral basket Türkiye has offered other African partners in recent years. Erdoğan also congratulated Boakai on Liberia's recent election as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

This was not a first encounter.
It followed an earlier working visit by Boakai to Ankara in early July, during which the Liberian president was received at the Presidential Complex for talks covering trade and investment, infrastructure, agriculture, healthcare, education, energy, technical cooperation, and capacity building. Liberia's Executive Mansion described Erdoğan as welcoming Monrovia's efforts to improve governance and strengthen its investment climate, and as expressing Türkiye's readiness to expand cooperation through trade, investment, technical assistance, and development partnerships. Boakai was accompanied on that trip by Minister of State Hadja Mamaka Bility and National Security Adviser Samuel Kofi Woods.

The Karpowership Wrinkle
One detail from the run-up to these talks is worth flagging for readers following Liberian domestic politics. Boakai reportedly departed Monrovia for that earlier Ankara visit aboard a private jet belonging to Karpowership, the Turkish floating-power-plant company, whose bid for a Liberian Electricity Corporation contract has drawn scrutiny and was previously rejected under prior management amid concerns raised by international donors. The optics a sitting president travelling to negotiate bilateral cooperation with Türkiye aboard the branded aircraft of a Turkish company with an active, contested commercial interest in Liberia have already prompted questions in Liberian media about potential conflicts of interest, irrespective of whether Karpowership's proposal features on the official bilateral agenda.

Reading This Against the Wider Pattern

Liberia's case fits neatly into a strategy this column has tracked repeatedly across the region: Ankara building relationships through infrastructure diplomacy note the parallel Turkish transport ministry engagement earlier this year on assessing Roberts International Airport for a possible government-to-government revitalization project alongside education and defence-sector cooperation, the same combination underpinning Türkiye's growing footprint in Ghana through the Maarif Foundation, TIKA, and Hudai Foundation. Ankara's approach to Monrovia mirrors, almost sector-for-sector, its approach to Accra: trade first, then defence-industrial cooperation, then education and soft-power institution-building, sustained through repeated leader-to-leader contact rather than one-off summits.

For Liberia specifically, the relationship also lands amid a broader reset of Monrovia's foreign engagements under the Boakai administration, which has signaled interest in diversifying its external partnerships beyond its traditional American orientation. Whether that diversification serves Liberia's stated goals of infrastructure renewal and economic transformation, or simply adds another external patron to a list that already includes competing Gulf, Chinese, and Western interests in the country's ports, airport, and power sector, is a question Liberian civil society and legislators will need to keep pressing as the Erdoğan-Boakai relationship matures beyond its current handshake-and-communiqué phase.

Mustapha Bature Sallama.
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal investigation and Intelligence Analysis.

International Conflict Management and Peace Building.USIP

mustysallama@gmail.com
+233-555-275-880
Sources
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