Turkey to move its Sudan embassy after ambassador’s car hit

Turkey will move its embassy from Khartoum to Port Sudan after gunfire on the ambassador’s car, the foreign minister says.

Turkey will move its embassy in Khartoum to Port Sudan after the Turkish ambassador’s car was hit by gunfire, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

“On the recommendation of the transitional government and the Sudanese army, we have decided to temporarily move our embassy to Port Sudan for security reasons,” Cavusoglu told reporters in the southern city of Antalya on Saturday.

No casualties were reported and the source of the gunfire that hit Ismail Cobanoglu’s vehicle was unclear, Turkish diplomatic sources quoted by Anadolu Agancy said. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The warring factions each blamed the attack on the ambassador’s car.

On April 15, fighting broke out between two rival generals – army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander Mohammed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands more injured in the conflict.

In recent months, a disagreement had developed between the two sides over the integration of the RSF into the armed forces, a key condition of Sudan’s transitional agreement with political groups.

Sudan has been without a functioning government since late 2021, when the military sacked Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok’s caretaker government and declared a state of emergency in a move labeled by political forces as a “coup d’état”.

The transition period, which began in August 2019 after the ousting of former president Omar al-Bashir, was scheduled to end with elections in early 2024.