Developing economic relations with GCC countries has become a consistent objective of the Turkish government since the coming in power of AKP. They have been successful in rallying part of the Turkish business community to this objective, thus building an internal social consensus towards opening to the Gulf.

Recent discussion surrounding a 'Turkish model' for the Arab world has centered mainly on the achievements of the AKP in Turkey and its supposed ideological proximity to the political parties that have arisen from the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

The discovery of petroleum wealth in the middle of the last century completely reconfigured the political economy of Qatar. Small local population size and low levels of labor force participation pushed Qatar to seek alternate sources of labor to meet burgeoning labor demands.

This contribution consists in analyzing the unifying or opposing relations between the central State-power and the southern part of central-Saharan populations, mainly Arabs and Tuaregs, within the relational framework of colonial and Malian armed forces. The French Colonial State and the Malian independent State (from the 1960 independence movement) are both considered by Arabs and Tuaregs as external entities, whatever the form of their relation, good or bad.

This contribution consists in analyzing the unifying or opposing relations between the central State-power and the southern part of central-Saharan populations, mainly Arabs and Tuaregs, within the relational framework of colonial and Malian armed forces.