Recent Washington Post reporting broke the story of Turkish arms manufacturers engaging in weapons sales to both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and possibly the rebel group Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which the United States has accused of committing genocide and human rights abuses throughout Sudan’s civil war.

The report provides details of “Baykar,” a leading Turkish arms manufacturer, which is owned by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law, Selcuk Bayraktar, of selling offensive weapons to the Sudanese Defense Industries System (DIS), the Sudanese military’s procurement agency. Baykar’s shipments to the SAF appear to violate existing U.S. and European Union sanctions.

The deal between Baykar and SAF is worth $120 million, resulting in the sale of six TB2 drones, three ground control stations, and 600 warheads in 2023. Interestingly, the sale occurred on November 16, 2023, five months after the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on DIS.

Additionally, The Washington Post report identifies “Arca Defense,” another Turkish arms manufacturer, of engaging in extensive contact with Algoney Hamdan Daglo Musa, a senior figure from the RSF, the chief procurement officer for RSF and the brother of its leader. However, whether Arca has sold weaponry to the RSF is not clear, and the firm has denied this possibility.

The Sudanese Civil War began in April 2023 following escalating tensions between two rival factions: the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo or Hemeti. The country’s two leading generals were initially allies in the 2021 coup that overthrew Sudan’s fledgling pro-democracy transitional government following the ousting of long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. However, the two fell out over how to integrate paramilitary forces into the regular army.

The war in Sudan........

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