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ANKARA — When Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan visits Uganda and Kenya this week, he will be seeking not only to increase trade but to stamp out the influence of an Islamic cleric whose network was long an instrument of Turkey’s soft power in Africa. Ankara officially declared the Hizmet organisation of preacher Fethullah Gulen, which claims millions of followers worldwide, a terrorist group this week, stepping up pressure on a movement Erdogan once looked to for help in spreading Turkish cultural influence and commerce overseas.

Erdogan now accuses his former ally of building a “parallel state” through followers in the police, judiciary, media and business, and of using it to try to overthrow him, allegations which Gulen denies. The president has made eradicating the Hizmet movement a top priority at home and abroad.

“This network organises itself swiftly in the countries it goes to by using Turkey’s name and power, and opportunities are offered to it as a result,” a senior Turkish official said ahead of Erdogan’s departure for Uganda on Tuesday.

“Through these trips, it will be explained that this is a terrorist organisation harmful to Turkey and that Turkey does not support it,” the official said. Erdogan has long described Hizmet as a terrorist grouping, but the formal designation by cabinet puts it on a par with Kurdish militants confronting the Turkish army and Islamic State fighters operating in the country.

The Hizmet movement had for decades underpinned Turkish efforts to deepen foreign ties, especially in the assertive opening to Africa, the Middle East and Asia after the Islamist-rooted AK Party founded by Erdogan took power in 2002. Its schools, including close to a hundred in sub-Saharan Africa alone, have been a source of influence and revenue for the movement and paved the way for Turkish commercial interests to gain a foothold in new markets. Sons and daughters of political elites have been educated in their classrooms. But differences between Erdogan and Gulen began to emerge over issues including a peace process with Kurdish militants in Turkey’s southeast, and came to a head in December 2013 when police and prosecutors seen as sympathetic to Gulen opened a corruption investigation into Erdogan’s inner circle. Authorities have since taken over Gulenist media companies, seized a bank and purged police and judiciary of presumed followers. They have also taken their battle overseas, pressuring governments to shut down Hizmet schools and seeking Gulen’s extradition from the United States, where he lives in self-imposed exile. “We consider the Gulen network a national security threat and the issue of their influence regularly comes up in our discussions with African leaders among others,” a source in Erdogan’s office said. — Reuters.