Kenya calls for united front against terrorism

By Diyar Guldogan

ANKARA

The international community must come together to fight terrorism, Kenya's foreign minister said on a visit to Turkey the day after a suicide bomb rocked Istanbul.

Amina Mohamed, whose home country has been repeatedly targeted by Somalia-based al-Shabaab militants in recent years, called for a united front against terrorists.

“Terrorism is not unique to one country or one region,” she told Anadolu Agency on Wednesday while visiting Ankara for a conference of Turkish ambassadors. “It strikes indiscriminately.”

On Tuesday, a suicide bomber that Turkish officials have linked to Daesh detonated explosives among a crowd of German tourists in Istanbul’s historic Sultanahmet district, killing ten. Fifteen other people were wounded.

Kenya has suffered two large-scale terror attacks in recent years. In April, 148 were killed when al-Shabaab attacked a university in the country’s east and in 2013 67 died in an attack on a shopping center in capital Nairobi.

Al-Shabaab continues to carry out regular attacks along the border as Kenyan troops battle the group in Somalia.

Mohamed said Turkey had worked alongside Kenya through intelligence-sharing.

“There are many areas in which we can cooperate,” she said, referring to wider relations between the countries. “The potential is big. We just need to use it.”

Turkey opened an embassy in Nairobi in 1968, five years after Kenyan independence, and trade between the two countries amounted to $122.5 million in 2014. Kenya has become an increasingly important partner as Turkish exporters focus on Africa.

Mohamed said she hoped Turkey and Kenya would expand cooperation to other fields such as energy. “We are one of the largest producers of renewable energy in Africa,” she said. “Apart from that, we have oil and gas.”

Mohamed praised Turkey’s role in Kenyan development projects as “amazing”. The Turkish International Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) has developed projects in fields such as health, food, agriculture and education, according to the Foreign Ministry’s website, and Turkish NGOs provide health and emergency aid.