reshaped

Khartoum, Sudan – A senior Sudanese minister says more than three years of a devastating war in the country have “profoundly reshaped” its demographic makeup.

Minister of Human Resources and Social Development Mutasim Ahmed Saleh told Al Jazeera Arabic that his ministry was working with several partners to strengthen population policies and link them to social protection programmes.

Sudan has been embroiled in a brutal civil war between its army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary since April 2023. The war is estimated to have killed about 200,000 people and displaced more than 11 million, creating what the United Nations calls the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

The war has also affected Sudan’s demographics.

Before the war, the North African country’s population was expected to exceed 64 million by 2035, according to official data. In 2020, the population stood at about 44.4 million, with forecasts of a growth rate of about 2.39 percent – one of the highest rates globally.

The war has not only displaced millions of people internally in South Darfur, North Darfur and Central Darfur states, it has also forced tens of thousands of others to seek asylum in neighbouring countries, including Egypt, South Sudan and Chad.

Saleh said the most significant demographic changes caused by the war included a general increase in poverty levels, a large segment of citizens losing their income, the deterioration of basic services in a number of areas, and a decline in the labour market and human capital.

To mark World Population Day on July 11, the minister said his government would work for the people – “the focus and ultimate aim of the state’s attention” – and strengthen social protection programmes.

Saleh said his ministry, through the National Population Council and with other state partners, would strengthen Sudan’s population policies and link them to social protection, the voluntary return of refugees, the reintegration of displaced people, and human resource development to contribute to rebuilding the country’s human capital as the “cornerstone of national recovery and sustainable development”.

He said that investing in people was “the real investment in Sudan’s future”.

“The more we succeed in restoring population stability and empowering citizens economically and socially, the closer we come to building a more stable, just and prosperous homeland,” Saleh said.

Population imbalance

Experts say Sudan is distinct in its demographic structure – it has a large youth population, with about 70 percent of the population under the age of 30, according to data from the last census conducted in 2008.

They say that its large youth population gives Sudan a demographic dividend that could drive economic development. But Saleh’s ministry said young people have faced challenges such as limited access to education, scarce job opportunities and widespread poverty, even before the conflict turned them into one of the worst-affected groups.

Khalid Saad, director of the Sudanese Center for Development Communication, told Al Jazeera that Sudan’s population crisis did not begin with the war.

Despite the country’s vast territory and abundant natural resources, it has suffered for decades from a clear imbalance in population distribution, he said.

“The war came to deepen this imbalance, redraw the demographic map through displacement and asylum, empty some areas of their populations, burden other cities with numbers beyond their capacity to absorb, while large numbers of people have returned to areas retaken by government forces,” he said.

Saad said the likely return of people does not mean the end of the demographic crisis, because returnees often go back to areas that have lost a large part of their economic infrastructure.

“The challenge therefore remains in rebuilding an environment that ensures their stability and prevents renewed displacement,” he said.

The war, Saad added, raises questions that still require precise answers: the actual scale of human losses; how the war has affected mortality rates; how it has changed patterns of marriage and childbearing; the impact of displacement and migration on birth rates and age structure; and how the emigration of skilled professionals will affect the size of the workforce in coming years.

Answers to these questions form the basis for any economic or social planning in the post-war phase, he said.

Data released by the National Population Council also points to a demographic imbalance.

Sudan’s urban population rose to about 17.9 million in 2020, with Khartoum alone accounting for about 42 percent of the country’s urban population, indicating a pattern of internal migration driven by uneven development.

The International Organization for Migration said that about 4.1 million people have returned to their areas of origin across Sudan. The vast majority — more than 80 percent — returned from within Sudan to nine states, led by Khartoum, Gezira and Sennar.

According to the organisation, the number of internally displaced people has fallen by 23 percent compared with the highest level recorded in January 2025, when the number of people displaced within Sudan stood at nearly 12 million.

Sudan has entered its fourth year of conflict amid a complex political and military landscape, with little hope of a resolution. Infrastructure has collapsed, and essential services remain disrupted.

Meanwhile, local and international warnings are mounting over a worsening humanitarian crisis, driven by shortages of food and medicines, and the difficulty of delivering aid to affected or besieged areas.

Istanbul, Turkiye – At around 19:30 GMT on July 15, 2016, a faction of the Turkish military launched a coordinated attempt to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s democratically elected government.

But within hours, the attempted takeover involving tanks and fighter jets had been quashed. Thousands of people poured onto the streets of major cities, joining loyalist members of the army and the police, and much of the chain of command, in defeating the putschists.

The failed coup attempt 10 years ago was not only the bloodiest in Turkiye’s modern history – some 250 were killed and more than 2,200 wounded – but also a watershed moment that fundamentally changed relations between civil and military authorities in the country.

“The failure of July 15 had three pillars,” said retired Colonel Unal Atabay.

“The resistance of the people, the officers, noncommissioned officers and soldiers inside the Turkish Armed Forces who resisted the coup, and the institutional reflex of the armed forces themselves.”

Military intervention cast a long shadow over Turkish politics for decades.

The armed forces overthrew governments in 1960 and 1980; intervened through a memorandum in 1971; and forced another elected government from office in what became known as the “post-modern coup” of 1997.

Although civilian rule returned after each intervention, the military remained one of Turkiye’s most influential institutions, seeing itself as the guardian of the republic’s founding principles.

Yet that was not how the republic’s founders had envisioned civil-military relations. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Ismet Inonu, both commanders during the War of Independence of the early 1920s, entered politics only after leaving military service.

“If the military had remained involved in politics, it would most likely have been exploited by various groups in the uncertain and weak conditions of those early years of the republic. They made the most accurate diagnosis and said that the military should stay out of politics.

Political scientist Ali Carkoglu said separation between military command and civilian politics was regarded as one of the republic’s founding principles, calling it “the most accurate diagnosis”.

Over time, however, the armed forces increasingly came to see themselves as guardians of the state, repeatedly invoking that role to justify intervention in politics.

But 10 years since the latest attempt, few experts believe Turkiye faces another conventional coup.

“You never say never,” said Howard Eissenstat, a Turkiye specialist at St Lawrence University in New York. “But to bet on a military coup in Turkiye is to lose money.”

While the military’s political role appears to have receded, the broader consequences of the post-coup transformation remain the subject of debate.

Reducing the military’s influence over politics had already become a central objective of the governing Justice and Development Party, or AK Party, after it came to power in 2002.

Following years of tension with the military establishment, the government steadily expanded civilian oversight – and the failed coup accelerated that process dramatically.

Ankara accused the network of United States-based Muslim scholar Fethullah Gulen, designated by the Turkish government as the Fethullah Terrorist Organisation (FETO), of orchestrating the coup attempt. Tens of thousands of soldiers, judges, police officers, teachers and civil servants were dismissed or arrested. Military academies were replaced by the National Defence University, command structures were overhauled, and civilian oversight of the armed forces expanded.

Atabay said these changes have fundamentally reshaped the relationship between the military, the state and society.

He added the military has strengthened its internal oversight after the coup to prevent another organised infiltration, noting that both the armed forces and wider society are now more alert to attempts to penetrate state institutions.

“External centres of power may always make such attempts,” he said. “The important thing is to detect them early, expose them and build a system that prevents them from infiltrating the state.”

For Carkoglu, however, the military cannot be examined in isolation from the broader health of Turkiye’s democratic institutions.

He said bringing the armed forces firmly under civilian authority was essential. But civilian supremacy alone, he argued, does not necessarily amount to democratic consolidation.

“It is certainly a success that civilian authority has established greater control over the military,” he said. “But if that comes at the expense of democracy, then it is, at the very least, an unfortunate outcome for Turkish politics.”

Carkoglu noted that institutions derive legitimacy not simply from who controls them, but from whether citizens trust them.

“The healthy development of trust in institutions requires competitive politics and the possibility of free expression,” he said. “Otherwise, institutions themselves begin to lose credibility.”

That debate has become increasingly prominent in recent years.

The arrests of several opposition mayors – including Istanbul mayor and presidential candidate for the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Ekrem Imamoglu, together with investigations into other opposition politicians, have fuelled criticism from political parties and rights groups, who argue judicial processes are increasingly being used against rivals.

The government rejects those accusations, saying the investigations are conducted independently and are based solely on evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

The debate has unfolded during a period of remarkable political continuity. Since coming to power in 2002, the AK Party has won every parliamentary election, most recently in 2023, when the governing People’s Alliance retained its parliamentary majority.

Rights groups, meanwhile, focus on a different legacy of the coup.

Human Rights Watch says emergency powers introduced after the 2016 coup attempt gradually evolved into broader restrictions on civil liberties. It argues the crackdown extended well beyond those responsible for the attempted overthrow, leaving many dismissed public employees unable to rebuild their professional lives even after acquittal.

The government says the measures were necessary to dismantle clandestine networks inside the state and prevent Turkiye from facing a similar threat again.

Ten years on, that effort continues. On Monday, two days before the anniversary, Turkish authorities launched coordinated operations across all 81 provinces targeting nearly 1,000 suspects over alleged links to FETO.

For the government, it was another reminder that the events of July 2016 remain an active national security issue rather than a closed chapter in the country’s history.