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AzerNEWS Staff

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Uganda’s Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, said Wednesday that he had severed all ties with Turkish interests in Uganda and called on Turkish nationals to leave the country. He also ordered his political supporters to demonstrate outside the Turkish Embassy in Kampala on September 18.

“I have already severed anything to do with the Turks in Uganda. They should pack their bags as soon as possible and get out of our country,” Kainerugaba wrote on X.

About two hours later, he announced the planned protest and named the person responsible for organizing it.

“We are demonstrating in full force at the Turkish Embassy on the 18th of September. Hon. Fadhil is in charge of this demonstration. PLU better do a good job. My order will not change this time. Instead we will arrest ANY Turkish agent who says anything different!” he wrote.

PLU, or the Patriotic League of Uganda, is the political group chaired by Kainerugaba. Supporters responding to his post said they had received the order.

There was no corresponding statement from Uganda’s Foreign Ministry or President Yoweri Museveni, who is Kainerugaba’s father.

A long-running dispute

Kainerugaba’s latest statements are part of a dispute with Turkey that has played out publicly for months.

In April, he demanded $1 billion from Ankara over Uganda’s military role in Somalia and threatened to close the Turkish Embassy and block Turkish Airlines operations.

In June, he claimed Uganda had cancelled a multibillion-dollar Standard Gauge Railway contract with Turkish construction company Yapi Merkezi. He also said Turkish citizens had been given 30 days to leave Uganda and called for protests outside the Turkish Embassy, although those demonstrations were later postponed.

A central issue in the dispute has been Uganda’s demand that Turkey hand over or expel Fred Lumbuye, a Ugandan critic of the government.

Wednesday’s posts effectively revive that campaign, this time setting September 18 as the date for a demonstration and threatening the arrest of anyone on the Turkish side who “says anything different.”

What remains unclear

Kainerugaba is Uganda’s top military officer and a senior presidential adviser, but he is not the country’s foreign minister. His posts on X, by themselves, do not constitute a formal government order expelling Turkish nationals or severing diplomatic relations with Turkey.

They do, however, amount to a direct instruction to his political network to mobilize outside a foreign embassy on September 18, following months of increasingly public tensions between Kainerugaba and Turkish interests in Uganda.