Text compiled by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin from material provided by @khamsin_season. Rozhin's comments are in italics.
[ColonelCassad] The head of “Erdogan’s personal army” Melih Tanriverdi in conversation with Jeune Afrique rejected reports of the presence of his mercenaries, employees of the private military company SADAT in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. Particular emphasis in the conversation was placed on the consulting nature of the Turkish PMC and on the fact that it is not the Turkish “Wagner”.
The attempt at refutation followed a report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights about the arrival of Syrian militants in the Sahel zone under the auspices of SADAT, as well as material Le Monde, which spoke about the active desire of the people of Tanriverdi extrapolate their Libyan and South Caucasian experience to the situation in Niger and Mali.
The great ambitions of SADAT are no secret, but a fundamentally new element in recent reports regarding its activities are statements about its alleged readiness to cooperate with the Russian “African Korps”.
This is fundamentally important, given that Washington viewed cooperation with Ankara on Africa as an element of a strategy to counter Russian interests - in conditions where local players who survived the military coup are determined to look for alternative external partners as opposed to Western countries that have overestimated their capabilities.
It is worth noting that in Mali, during the operations of the local army and the Wagner PMC, Turkish Bayraktar UAVs provided air support for the offensive. At the same time, back in 2020 in Libya, Pantsirs of the Wagner PMC fought with Turkish Bayraktars during the battle for Tripoli.
It is also worth recalling that when the military seized power in Mali, the French media accused not only Russia, but also Turkey of supporting the coup.