SADAT, a Turkish private military company founded by Erdoğan’s close ally, advances Islamist ideology across Africa and the Middle East. It trains and recruits Syrian mercenaries for Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Sahel, blurring state policy with deniable coercion.
The SADAT paramilitary instrument expansion represents a significant shift in regional security dynamics, blurring the lines between state policy and deniable coercion. As a core tool of Turkish influence, the SADAT paramilitary instrument expansion enables the pursuit of ideological agendas across Africa and the Middle East.
SADAT paramilitary instrument expansion and regional influence
The SADAT International Defense Consultancy has grown into a key instrument of Turkish influence in Africa and the Middle East.
Turkey’s use of private military actors has become an increasingly important—if opaque —feature of its foreign policy toolkit. Among these, SADAT International Defense Consultancy stands out as a quasi-official instrument that blurs the line between state policy and deniable coercion.
Global reach of SADAT paramilitary instrument expansion
SADAT is a Turkish private military company (PMC) founded in 2012 by former Turkish Brigadier General Adnan Tanriverdi, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The firm describes its mission as providing military training, defense consulting, and security assistance primarily to Muslim-majority countries. In reality, it is a paramilitary instrument advancing Ankara’s regional and ideological agenda to spread Islamist extremism, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caucasus.
SADAT’s mission emanates from a grievance narrative against the West. Its corporate manifesto is explicit in its Islamist inclinations. It intends to prevent Muslim countries “from dependence on Western crusader imperialist countries and to help establishment of a defensive collaboration and defensive industrial cooperation among Islamic countries with the intent of serving Islamic union.” SADAT intends to “to respond to all of 60 Islamic countries’…needs at defense sector [sic].” The company “will contribute to the emergence of the World of Islam as a Super power and to promote an environment of cooperation in [the] field of defense and defense industry among Islamic countries [sic].”
Private military companies and Turkish foreign policy
Tanriverdi was dismissed from the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) in 1997 for his Islamist leanings. Following the purge, Tanriverdi founded Turkey’s first PMC, SADAT. Tanriverdi was a personal confidant of Erdogan. Since its inception, SADAT has provided military security and training to organizations aligned with Islamist ideologies in Libya, Azerbaijan, West Africa, Syria, and Iraq.
Tanriverdi died in 2024, but SADAT—like its Russian counterpart, Wagner—has survived its founder. Before his death, Tanriverdi called for an Islamic “army for Palestine” and threatened that any Israeli operations in Gaza should lead to attacks on Tel Aviv. In Tanriverdi’s vision, this would be achieved by establishing a joint Islamic army. Tanriverdi’s son and the Turkish PMC’s new chief, Melih Tanriverdi, seeks to fill any vacuum left by the United States, Europe, or moderate Arab partners in the region.
Impacts of SADAT paramilitary instrument expansion
The precise number of mercenaries SADAT operates is unknown. But the organization has supported terror by training and recruiting fighters for al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State. In September 2024, the Armenian Bar Association also requested Global Magnitsky Sanctions against SADAT over “allegations of serious human rights abuses and complicity in violence and instability across conflict zones, particularly in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), Libya, and Syria.”
SADAT is fundamental to Turkish leaders’ desire for military power and Islamist influence in Africa and maintains a presence in nine states across the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and the Maghreb. The PMC began its first overseas mission in Libya in 2013. During Turkey’s intervention there in 2020, SADAT oversaw 5,000 Syrians recruited to fight alongside the Tripoli government.
Strategic objectives in sub-Saharan Africa
The PMC has more recently expanded its operations into the Sahel, where it guards Turkish economic interests and protects violent dictators. In 2024, French journalists reported that SADAT began staffing the security detail of Malian junta leader Assimi Goita. The UN has implicated Goita and his forces in mass murder and indiscriminate violence against civilians.
Syria is SADAT’s primary recruiting ground: the PMC enlisted recruits from eight militias within the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) for combat in Libya. In 2023, the US Treasury sanctioned one such militia, the Hamza Division, for torture, abduction, sexual violence, and robbery against civilians. SADAT also forced Syrian recruits into front-line combat in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, while enriching rights-abusing SNA leaders and often withholding pay. Captured foreign fighters explained that SADAT also trained Russian Muslims who joined ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch), entering Syria through Turkey’s “jihadi highway.”
Mercenary recruitment and regional conflict zones
In August 2020, SADAT began recruiting and sending between 1,500 and 2,000 Syrians to fight for Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh. French President Emmanuel Macron cited intelligence revealing 300 of these Syrians to be members of jihadist militias.
The cumulative picture is one of a state leveraging privatized force to pursue strategic and ideological objectives under a veneer of deniability. While SADAT enables Turkey to act with agility in contested regions, it also complicates international efforts to enforce norms around conflict conduct and accountability. As Ankara continues to expand its influence across multiple theaters, SADAT is likely to remain a central—if controversial—pillar of its foreign policy architecture.