By Mohamed AG Ahmedou
Journalist specializing in the Sahel and security dynamics
In Bamako, BAMEX 2025 showcases a Turkey torn between its models and its drones.
Bamako recently hosted BAMEX 2025, the international arms fair, from November 10 to 14, where Turkish stands occupied a central position: Bayraktar TB2 drones, Akinci systems, tactical radars, light armored vehicles, and riot control equipment.
For the Malian authorities, the event is a showcase of “strategic” military cooperation.
For the populations of the North and Center, it is yet another symbol of a militarization that condemns them a little more each day.
Because while visitors strolled through the aisles of BAMEX 2025, Tuareg families from Timbuktu, Fulani herders from Macina, and Arab traders from Gao were still burying their dead, victims of drone strikes attributed to the Malian armed forces, supported by Russian paramilitaries and Turkish instructors.
Summer 2024: When SADAT Establishes a Presence in Bamako
Since the summer of 2024, a new element has transformed military cooperation between Bamako and Ankara: the discreet but confirmed deployment of mercenaries from the Turkish military company SADAT, often described as the Turkish equivalent of Wagner.
According to several Malian security sources, these men now provide close protection for Assimi Goïta, oversee intelligence cells in Bamako, and sometimes accompany operations in the north of the country alongside Africa Corps.
A Tuareg official from the Goundam region, interviewed for comment, stated:
“We hear Turkish spoken at some bases, we see new advisors. They provide training, they supervise… but the subsequent bombings never hit the jihadists. It’s our camps that burn.”
Turkish drones kill civilians, not jihadists:
In the regions of Timbuktu, Gao, Ménaka, Mopti, and Douentza, the accounts are now similar: drones circle, spot targets, fire—and the dead are almost always civilians.
A Fulani herder from the Ténenkou district recounts:
“Three drones arrived over the pasture. The young men guarding the herd ran. The drone fired twice. We found four bodies, all teenagers. None of them were carrying weapons.”
In Tarkint, in the Bourem area, an Arab notable testifies:
“We don’t see the drones striking the jihadist katibas. They strike our markets, our camps, our cars. It’s as if we were the enemy.”
This discrepancy fuels deep anger against military regimes—but also against Turkey, whose drones have become instruments of arbitrary violence.
Between Schools and Hospitals: The Old Turkish Model Is Cracking:
For this is the crux of the contradiction:
Turkey was long respected in Mali and Niger, not for its weapons, but for its high-quality schools, modern hospitals, and humanitarian programs, often far more effective than those of Europe.
In Niamey, Turkish schools once welcomed the children of the most affluent families. In Bamako, Turkish hospitals provided care without discrimination, and thousands of young Sahelian people learned management, engineering, and business skills thanks to scholarships offered by Ankara.
A Nigerien teacher sums up this disappointment:
“We knew a Turkey that brought science, education, and medicine.
Today, it brings drones that kill women and children. How can the people not turn away?”
“In Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger: Open Support for Coup Leaders: Turkey presents itself as an ally of African sovereignty.
Yet, it is the military juntas that seized power through coups that are now benefiting from its support: drones sold to Mali, surveillance systems and ammunition supplied to Burkina Faso, enhanced military training in Niger.
Strengthened cooperation with regimes accused of massacres and enforced disappearances.
This image is rapidly crumbling among civilians.
In Zouera, a Tuareg woman who lost two children in a drone strike sums up the new perception:
“Turkey was a country we respected. Now, their drones hunt our children like animals.”
BAMEX 2025: A Showcase of Decline:
The BAMEX 2025 trade show perfectly illustrates this shift.
There is no trace of the values that once made the Turkish model so compelling to countries in the Global South: no booths on education, no conferences on institutional reforms, no proposals on medicine, civilian technology, or infrastructure.
Just weapons.
Drones.
Weaponry.
And Malian leaders in front of the cameras, displaying machines they present as “the solution.”
A municipal official from Niger, present as an observer, confides:
“If Turkey thinks it can be loved by selling us drones that kill our children, it is mistaken. It is losing all the moral capital it had built up.”
Turkey’s image is crumbling in Sahelian communities:
In the nomadic regions of Mali, Turkey’s once solid, almost fraternal reputation is eroding a little more each week.
For many Tuareg, Arab, and Fulani people, Turkish drones now symbolize: daily fear, the destruction of pastoralism, the complete lack of distinction between terrorists and civilians, and Turkey’s collaboration with regimes accused of crimes against humanity.
An Arab notable from the Timbuktu region sums it up:
“Turkey had everything to be a model. But it chose to be an arms dealer serving illegitimate regimes.”
A historic turning point for Ankara.
Turkey now finds itself at a moral and strategic crossroads. In the Sahel, its influence no longer rests on education, medicine, technology, or governance: it rests on drones, mercenaries, and alliances with coup leaders.
If it persists, it will definitively lose the admiration of the Sahelian peoples who saw it as a model of development.
History will remember one question:
Does Turkey want to be a model for Africa, or just another player in the Sahel tragedy?
Mohamed AG Ahmedou
18-11-25