The Turkish ambassador’s car after the attack. Via Twitter.
On May 6, gunfire hit the car of Turkey’s ambassador to Sudan as it was moving in the country’s capital, Khartoum, where the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF) have been fighting for more than three weeks.
No casualties were reported and the source of the gunfire that hit ambassador Ismail Cobanoglu’s vehicle was unclear, said Turkish diplomatic sources quoted by Anadolu Agency. Both the army and the RSF blamed each for the attack on the ambassador’s car.
Later, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced that the embassy will be moved from Khartoum to the Red Sea city of Khartoum to Port Sudan.
“With recommendation from the transitional government and Sudan army, we decided to move our embassy temporarily to Port Sudan for security reasons,” Cavusoglu told reporters in the southern city of Antalya.
The clashes broke out in Sudan in mid-April as a result of a disagreement over how the RSF should be integrated into the army and what authority should oversee the process during transition to civilian-led rule in the country.
The army’s Commander-in-Chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the commander of the RSF General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo have been ruling the country as the president and vice-president of the so-called Sovereign Council since a coup in October 2021.
Gunfire targeted a Turkish Air Force C-130 plane heading to Wadi Sayidna Airport in Sudan to evacuate Turkish civilians on April 28. The warring sides blamed each other, back then. Despite this, Turkey maintained a neutral stance on the power struggle and decided to keep its embassy in the country open.
Clashes are still ongoing in Khartoum and other parts of Sudan. However, the army and the RSF have agreed to start direct talks in Saudi Arabia after pressure from the United States. A seven-day ceasefire will reportedly be discussed. The ceasefire would help stabilize the humanitarian situation in the country, where more than 700 people have been killed since the start of the conflict.
