Tawassoul: Turkey’s gateway to influence in Mauritania

Ali Ragab

A large uprising by the Mauritanian people against the Turkish and Qatari presence in the country occurred during a popular demonstration in front of the Turkish embassy in the capital, Nouakchott.

The regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeks to penetrate and control Mauritania’s resources, as well as take the country as a base to penetrate the rest of Africa and also threaten Europe.

Turkey’s ambitions in Mauritania focused on the desire of Turkish companies to obtain the wealth of Mauritanians through the gateway of investment, which constitutes an economic interface to penetrate, control and support Turkey’s tools in the country, especially Brotherhood-affiliated organizations and the National Rally for Reform and Development Party (Tawassoul).

Mohamed al-Hassan Ould al-Dido al-Shanqeeti, the spiritual father of the Brotherhood and extremist groups in Mauritania, who resides in the Brotherhood’s capital, Istanbul, and Mohamed Jemil Ould Mansour, the former Secretary-General of Tawassoul, are the most important keys for Turkey to penetrate Mauritania.

The Brotherhood-affiliated Tawassoul Party, which was inaugurated in the summer of 2007, is considered the most prominent heir to political Islamism in Mauritania. The party follows the ideology of the Brotherhood and is influenced by the ideas of Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb.

The Brotherhood’s ideology first appeared in Mauritania in the mid-1970s with the establishment of the centrist reformist movement. The Islamic group was the first such organization in Mauritania. The Brotherhood-backed movement developed until they founded the Hasam organization in 1990, then the Umma Party and finally the Tawassoul Party.

According to party data, Tawassoul has about 100,000 supporters. The party is headed by Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Sidi, who was elected president of the party in December 2017, succeeding Ould Mansour.

Turkey’s involvement in Mauritania by means of Tawassoul is part of Ankara’s strategic vision to infiltrate several regions of Africa, especially in the western and central regions of the continent, with Mauritania representing a cornerstone of this scheme.

The Mauritanian newspaper Al-Badil reported that Tawassoul receives funds estimated at tens of millions of dollars from Brotherhood organizations based in Qatar and Turkey transferred through merchants in Mauritania and Angola.

Former Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz – despite his grandmother’s relationship with Qatar – noted that they were afraid of the role of Turkey and Qatar and their support for the Brotherhood would threaten the stability of the Mauritanian state.

Ould Abdel Aziz said in a press interview, “It is not normal for one party to use Islam and monopolize it. This is unacceptable, and it will not be acceptable in the future.” He also did not rule out taking measures against Tawassoul.

“The tragedies that extremist Islamist movements have caused to Arabs and Muslims are more than the deaths and tragedies that Israel caused the Palestinians and the Arabs in the three wars it fought with them,” he added.

Ould Abdel Aziz worked on countering the funding by Turkey and Qatar to finance the political arm of the Brotherhood in Mauritania. A report issued by the Portal Center indicated that Qatari and Turkish attempts to intervene in Mauritania aim to destabilize the country by financing centers accused of promoting takfiri ideology, as well as establishing entities under the guise of charities, with the aim of infiltrating Mauritanian society.

The former president took means to curb the Brotherhood’s influence, including a decision to close the Future for Dawa, Culture and Education Association that was established in 2008, which the Brotherhood had used to achieve its political interests in the country.

At the end of last month, the authorities also withdrew a license that they had granted to Abdullah Yassin University, which is dominated by Tawassoul, and will perhaps ban the group’s activities as well.

In January, the Arab African Center for Development in Mauritania organized a seminar entitled “Foreign Interventions in the Arab World: Turkish Intervention in Libya as a Model”, in which a large number of media professionals and jurists participated. This came in conjunction with the launch of the activities of the Peace in Libya summit organized in Berlin, Germany.

The participants criticized Turkey’s interventions in the Arab region, especially its military interference in Libya, emphasizing that Ankara’s activities destabilize security and stability and reflect its expansionist ambitions in Africa.

During the seminar, Ahmed Salem Ould Dah, director of the center and the Mauritanian Journalists Syndicate, called on Libyans to counter these intentions, to sit at the dialogue table, and to reject division in order to block the path of foreign powers in the Arab world.

For his part, Mauritanian writer and political analyst Mustafa Mohammed al-Mukhtar said that the Brotherhood does not place any weight or value for their homeland, but instead serves the interests of the Brotherhood and helps fulfill its agendas, pointing to the danger of the media arms that justify Turkey’s military interference in Libya. He added that the minds of many youth and the emerging generations have been kidnapped.