ANKARA — Turkey is moving Sudan higher up its foreign policy agenda as battlefield gains by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) create an opening for Ankara to strengthen its position along the Red Sea and consolidate a regional alignment with Egypt and Saudi Arabia against the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to Turkish officials and analysts.

Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohieddin Salem visited Ankara on Tuesday and met with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan. The pair discussed bilateral affairs, the security situation in Sudan and regional matters, according to the Turkish Foreign Ministry. 

The meeting between Salem and Fidan marked the second of its kind in less than two months amid rapidly intensifying high-level engagements between Sudan's army-aligned government and Turkey over the past six months. SAF leader General Abdel Fattah ⁠al-Burhan has met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey twice since March, including during a June trip to Ankara, and Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris also paid a visit to Ankara, last month.

The intensifying contacts come as the SAF seeks to build on recent gains against the paramilitary RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti. The civil war erupted in 2023 after the former allies fell out over the integration of the RSF into the regular military and over control of Sudan’s political transition, triggering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.