Since Sudan’s war erupted in April 2023, the confrontation between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has increasingly ceased to be a purely domestic conflict.
As fighting expanded and battlefield fortunes shifted, foreign supply lines became an integral part of the war. Weapons, drones, financing and political relationships connecting Sudan with regional capitals have increasingly influenced the military balance and the competing visions for the country’s future.
Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have all been linked, to varying degrees, to assistance benefiting the SAF. But the nature of that support differs significantly.
Some has involved weapons or commercial defence deals. Other support has been political or financial, while some has moved through third countries and networks associated with businessmen and figures from former president Omar al-Bashir’s government.
Among these actors, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have emerged as particularly important — not as members of a unified alliance, but as powers pursuing overlapping and sometimes contradictory interests in Sudan, the Red Sea and the wider Horn of Africa.
Turkey and Qatar also retain longstanding relationships with political and business networks connected to Sudan’s Islamist movement, which has rebuilt considerable influence during the war.
Turkey: The clearest military footprint
Of the three countries, Turkey has the most visible and documented connection to weapons used by the Sudanese army.
Amnesty International has documented Turkish-manufactured weapons in Sudan, including SAR-series rifles produced by Sarsılmaz, as part of a much wider flow of recently manufactured foreign weapons into the conflict.
Turkish weapons have also appeared among personnel associated with the SAF and security apparatus.
The most consequential development, however, has been armed drones.
Reporting based on contracts, correspondence, flight information and other documents has linked Turkish defence company Baykar to a substantial package involving Bayraktar TB2 drones and munitions for the Sudanese military.
Sudanese forces subsequently deployed Turkish drones as the SAF expanded its use of unmanned aircraft for reconnaissance and strikes.
The technology gave the army an additional capability alongside its conventional air force, enabling surveillance and precision attacks without exposing manned aircraft to the same risks.
Drones became increasingly important during the SAF’s effort to regain territory lost during the opening stages of the war, particularly in and around Khartoum.
Turkey has officially maintained that it does not militarily intervene on behalf of either side in Sudan.
Yet Turkey’s military-industrial footprint in the conflict has become increasingly difficult to separate from the SAF’s evolving battlefield capabilities.
Turkey’s influence now extends through Egypt
Turkey’s role is no longer limited to equipment acquired directly by Sudanese forces.
In February 2026, Reuters reported the deployment of powerful Turkish-made Bayraktar Akinci drones to an Egyptian airfield close to Sudan’s border. Officials and regional analysts said the deployment indicated that Egypt — one of the SAF’s most important regional allies — was becoming more deeply involved in the conflict.
The development demonstrates how Turkish defence technology has become embedded in a wider regional security architecture surrounding the Sudanese army.
Egypt provides strategic depth and maintains close institutional relations with the SAF, while Turkey has become an increasingly important supplier of advanced drone technology.
This means Ankara’s influence over Sudan’s military balance can no longer be measured solely by weapons delivered directly to SAF units.
Saudi Arabia: Influence through money and leverage
Saudi Arabia’s role is more complex.
Riyadh has positioned itself as a mediator since the beginning of the war, jointly sponsoring the Jeddah negotiations with the United States.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia has maintained close relations with the SAF leadership and has increasingly found itself strategically aligned with countries seeking to preserve Sudan’s regular army as the country’s dominant military institution.
The clearest illustration of Saudi leverage came through Sudan’s proposed arms deal with Pakistan.
In January 2026, Reuters reported that Pakistan was nearing an approximately $1.5 billion weapons agreement with Sudan that could include aircraft, drones and other military equipment.
The story changed dramatically several months later.
Reuters reported in April that Pakistan had placed the proposed $1.5 billion sale on hold after Saudi Arabia asked for the agreement to be terminated and said it would no longer finance the purchase.
The episode offers unusually clear evidence of the extent of Riyadh’s influence over Sudanese military procurement.
Saudi Arabia did not need to be the manufacturer of the weapons to shape the outcome. Its financial and diplomatic leverage was sufficient to help open — and ultimately close — a potential supply channel involving one of Pakistan’s largest proposed defence exports.
That distinction is important.
Evidence for Saudi Arabia directly supplying specific Saudi-manufactured weapons to the SAF remains limited. The stronger case is that Riyadh possesses financing, diplomatic access and procurement leverage capable of influencing the army’s ability to acquire weapons from third countries.
Saudi involvement therefore appears less like an unlimited military commitment and more like calculated support governed by shifting political considerations.
Qatar: Less visible weapons, deeper networks
Qatar represents a different type of influence.
Available reporting has pointed toward political and financial support for the SAF-aligned authorities, alongside longstanding relationships with Sudanese economic and political networks.
Public evidence identifying specific Qatari weapons systems in Sudan remains considerably weaker than the evidence surrounding Turkish equipment.
Instead, Doha’s significance lies partly in relationships developed during the Bashir era.
During Bashir’s rule, Qatar became an important economic and diplomatic partner for Khartoum, while Turkey expanded its own strategic presence, including around Suakin on the Red Sea.
Both countries developed close relationships with political figures and networks operating around Sudan’s former Islamist establishment.
The overthrow of Bashir in 2019 weakened that configuration as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt gained greater influence over Sudan’s transition.
The war that began in 2023, however, allowed many former networks to reorganise.
Political, business and Islamist figures dispersed after Bashir’s fall retained contacts and financial relationships abroad, providing potential bridges between Sudan’s wartime actors and foreign capitals.
Qatar’s role should therefore be understood less through a single weapons platform than through the infrastructure of political relationships, financing and influence built over decades.
Islamists turn battlefield mobilisation into political leverage
This dimension is particularly important because Sudan’s Islamist movement has used the war to rebuild influence lost after Bashir’s overthrow.
A Reuters investigation found that Islamist figures were already considering how their support for the army could facilitate a political comeback after the war.
More than 5,000 fighters linked to the Islamist movement were reported to have joined the SAF war effort, while senior figures indicated they could support an extended period of army rule followed by elections as a route back into formal politics.
The implications extend beyond battlefield manpower.
Islamist-linked organisations have been able to rebuild networks, regain access to state institutions and strengthen their position inside the broader coalition supporting the army.
Foreign assistance that strengthens the SAF therefore has potential secondary political consequences.
It does not mean Turkey or Qatar necessarily supports the army because of Islamist ideology. Both countries have broader strategic interests involving investment, the Red Sea, African markets and regional influence.
But historical relationships with Sudanese Islamist networks provide an additional political and financial bridge between foreign actors and forces surrounding the SAF.
The more important question may consequently be not simply who helps the army win battles, but which political organisations eventually benefit from an army strengthened by foreign assistance.
Saudi Arabia’s Islamist contradiction
Saudi Arabia occupies a markedly different ideological position.
Riyadh has historically opposed the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islamist movements it views as linked to the organisation.
Following Bashir’s overthrow, Saudi Arabia and the UAE sought to limit the political influence of Islamist factions and reduce the regional reach of Turkey and Qatar in Sudan.
The current war has created a significant contradiction.
Supporting the Sudanese army as the principal state military institution can simultaneously strengthen Islamist forces fighting alongside it — some of the same political networks Riyadh has historically sought to contain.
Saudi policy therefore reflects competing priorities.
Riyadh wants a stable Sudanese state, a secure Red Sea coastline and limits on the influence of regional competitors. But it also has little interest in seeing Sudan’s former Islamist establishment fully restored to power.
That helps explain why Saudi support for the SAF can appear substantial at one moment and constrained at another.
The abandoned Pakistani arms package is an example of this conditional approach.
A wider struggle across the Red Sea
These relationships are also becoming increasingly difficult to separate from the broader rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Reuters reported in February 2026 that Saudi-UAE competition had spread from Yemen across the Red Sea and into conflicts and political struggles throughout the Horn of Africa, including Sudan.
Sudan consequently sits at the intersection of several competing regional projects.
Saudi Arabia has moved closer to Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt on strategic and defence questions, while tensions between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have deepened.
That trend has accelerated significantly.
On August 7, 2026, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, establishing plans for high-level military coordination, joint exercises and deeper cooperation in areas including unmanned systems and defence production. Turkey has also identified Egypt as a possible future participant.
The agreement is not a Sudan-specific alliance, but it provides important context for Sudan’s changing regional environment.
Countries that have separately developed close relationships with the SAF are simultaneously building stronger defence ties with one another.
That does not mean they share identical objectives in Sudan.
It does mean the strategic environment surrounding the army is becoming increasingly interconnected.
Not a single pro-SAF bloc
It would therefore be misleading to describe Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia simply as a unified bloc supporting the Sudanese army.
Their objectives and methods differ.
Turkey has supplied military technology and developed a powerful defence industry presence across Africa.
Qatar’s influence has relied more heavily on financial, diplomatic and historical political networks.
Saudi Arabia possesses financial and diplomatic leverage capable of determining whether major weapons transactions proceed.
Egypt, meanwhile, provides the SAF with strategic depth and has expanded its own military capabilities using Turkish equipment.
What is emerging is not a formal alliance behind the Sudanese army, but an increasingly interconnected regional security architecture.
Turkey supplies technology.
Egypt provides geographical and strategic depth.
Qatar maintains political and financial relationships.
Saudi Arabia possesses the financial and diplomatic power to facilitate — or halt — major procurement channels.
The interests of these states converge around the SAF in some areas while diverging sharply in others.
Who benefits if the SAF wins?
That leads to the most consequential issue raised by foreign involvement in the war.
The question is no longer simply who supplies Sudan’s army.
It is who ultimately benefits politically from the military system those weapons, funds and alliances help sustain.
Sudan’s Islamist movement has arguably exploited regional competition more effectively than it created it.
The war has enabled Islamist-linked networks to rebuild organisational structures, mobilise fighters and regain political influence after the collapse of Bashir’s government.
A military victory for the SAF would therefore not necessarily restore the political landscape that existed before April 2023.
It could produce a fundamentally different state — one in which the regular army is stronger, armed groups allied with it have greater influence, Islamist networks are better organised and foreign powers possess deeper leverage over Sudanese institutions.
Foreign drones, aircraft, weapons deals and financing can alter the battlefield.
Their more lasting consequence, however, may be determining who controls the institutions that survive the war.
That is ultimately why the involvement of Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia matters.
Sudan is not merely becoming a battlefield supplied by competing regional powers. It is becoming an arena in which those powers are positioning themselves for the political order that follows.
And even if the shooting eventually subsides, the country could emerge from the conflict more militarised, more deeply penetrated by competing regional interests and with Islamist networks stronger than they were when Bashir fell in 2019.
The struggle over Sudan’s future may therefore continue long after the struggle over territory ends.
