HyeOctane

Omar al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, will be taking a special trip to Turkey this month as an official guest of Turkish President Abdullah Gul. He is expected to arrive in Ankara on January 21.As the leaders of two notoriously genocidal states, it should come as no surprise that Turkey and Sudan are forging ever closer ties. Indeed, we have seen Turkish officials repeatedly refer to Sudan as “our partner in Africa” and seek to promote greater trade links with the Khartoum government.

For its part, Sudan has also been borrowing Ankara’s genocide denial techniques, almost word for word. Turkey has strongly encouraged Sudan in this denial, with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan stating in March 2007, “I do not believe that there has been assimilation of a genocide in Darfur. In any case, the verses of the Kuran reject tribalism and clans.”

We can safely assume that one of the reasons for their upcoming meeting is to trade notes on how each party can mutually accelerate such disgraceful denialist claims.