Turkey–Africa voting cohesion in the UN General Assembly

The last two decades following the AKP’s coming to power in 2002 witnessed the advent of a burgeoning relationship between Turkey and Africa. This study assesses to what extent the intensification of Turkey–Africa relations is reflected in their voting behaviour in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). It takes North African countries, Muslim-Majority African Countries, and Sub-Saharan African countries as sub-regional groupings. Despite the non-binding nature of UNGA decisions, they offer important insights into a state’s (changing) foreign policy preferences and alignments. The study, therefore, aims at elaborating the extent to which Turkey and African countries act cohesively in the UNGA. This is done by using the Agreement Index (AI) that measures the level of cohesiveness between those parties. Results suggest no significant increase in Turkey–Africa voting cohesion since the start of Turkey’s opening to Africa policy in 1998, with cohesion levels differing across regional groups and issue areas.