From the violent scenes in Sudan to a diplomatic divorce to the FBI leaks – This is what the continent has been talking about this week.

Additionally, B&K Agency and your favourite storyteller are pleased to accompany you all along the Turkish election on 14th May with a special supplement dedicated to this pivotal moment for security in Europe and the Middle East.

Not-so-suddenly Sudan

Over the weekend, most people in the Brussels bubble and beyond brushed up on Google Maps to check where Sudan is located (dear reader, don’t be touchy), as firefights between the regular army loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RDF) guided by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo plunged the capital Khartoum into chaos. On Sunday, Sudan’s army hit paramilitary forces with air strikes, and on Monday, the EU’s ambassador to Sudan, Aidan O’Hara, was assaulted in his residency, leaving him with a big scare. On Tuesday, heavy gunfire and the roar of warplanes shattered plans for a ceasefire in the Sudanese capital, aggravating the humanitarian crisis the country is facing, where people are left without food and water.

However, the disorders do not come out of the blue. There are stories where it is not easy to point out the good and the evil. Who represents Good, who represents Evil, in the war that is tearing Sudan apart? Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the regular army, is the general who, in 2021, after a long service alongside the bloodthirsty dictator Omar al-Bashir, refuses to cede power in favour of the civilian rule. If the transition from an authoritarian model to democracy fails, it is also due to his refusal to step aside.

But on the other side, at the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RFS), there is General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as ‘Hemedti’, a notorious war criminal. His troops, the ‘janjaweed‘, are the protagonists of rapes, mutilations, and massacres on various scales. ‘Devils on horseback’, his militiamen are called: few times a definition has been so apt. Ça va sans dire, the Wagner butchers lurk in the background of the conflict. Similes cum similibus.

The Franco-German engine in offline mode

If French President Macron received a warm reception in Beijing earlier this month (a rare lakeside tea reception by President Xi Jinping in Guangzhou), the subsequent trip by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock turned out to be rather testy. Macron flew back to Paris, paving the way to uncertainty and embarrassment with his revival of “European strategic autonomy” and a shrug and smile on Taiwan. Unlike Manu, Madame Baerbock openly warned of what she called a Horrorszenario in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan while also challenging her Chinese counterpart Qin Gang on Ukraine.

Recent divergences between France and Germany highlight quite evident diplomatic discrepancies between Paris and Berlin. Once the engine of the European project (whatever that might mean), we witness now, on the one hand, Macron and his guilty pleasure in thinking of a Continent independent from the U.S. and, on the other hand, views in Germany split over on how to approach China. The conservative wing of the Social Democratic Party — to which Chancellor Olaf Scholz belongs — is opposed to the harsh rhetoric used by Baerbock’s Green Party, which is paradoxically more aligned with Von der Leyen’s position.

Henry Kissinger’s famous remark – “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?”, even though apocryphal, was never so spot on before.

Ops, I did it again

A 21-year-old airman for the Massachusetts National Guard named Jack Teixeira appeared in a Boston court last Friday charged under the Espionage Act after one of the most incredible classified documents leaks in recent memory. Pentagon papers (large parts of which the U.K. and Israel insist are untrue, manipulated or both) caused embarrassment and a diplomatic meltdown on both sides of the Atlantic after surfacing in an obscure gaming forum. A user called O.G. started sharing documents on a Discord channel called Thug Shaker Central. He was then “astonished” when one of the closed group’s teenage members posted them more widely, where they were picked up by… Russian-language Telegram channels.

A 17-year-old fellow member suggests O.G. was not a whistleblower like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning … they were just kids having fun.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials seem to be furious at the revelations of U.S. pessimism regarding Kyiv’s chances of capturing significant amounts of territory when it launches its expected counteroffensive. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Diplo focus: Turkish election

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is putting his mandate back on the line in the Turkish presidential election of 14th May against the backdrop of the economic crisis and the poor management of the consequences of the earthquake of 6th February. The election is being closely watched by the West, which fears that, if re-elected, The Reis will set up a more authoritarian and religiously conservative regime. Several foreign policy issues are also at stake in this election:

EU accession: While the talks have been stalled since 2018, the opposition hopes to re-launch the discussions through the implementation of liberal reforms. The problem is that several European countries – including France and Austria – are not very enthusiastic about reopening negotiations with Turkey. “They are used to the idea of a non-aligned Turkey, which deviates from EU norms and values and goes its own way,” said Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a journalist and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

NATO: After initially imposing a veto, Turkey finally gave the green light to Finland’s NATO membership on 30th March. The opposition pledges to end Turkey’s veto on Sweden but, more surprisingly, a re-elected Erdoğan could also approve the membership.

War in Ukraine: Since the Russian invasion, Turkey has continued to act as a go-between by supplying arms to Ukraine while refusing to sanction Russia. Ankara has also promoted the agreement on Ukrainian grain exports with the UN. Not being short of a contradiction, Erdoğan is now suggesting that Turkey could be the first NATO member to host Russian President Vladimir Putin on 27th April for the inauguration of the country’s first nuclear reactor built by the Russian atomic energy company Rosatom.