Issue No. 792

An End of Turkophilia in Somalia?

In November 2012, Somalia's federal parliament invited then-Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to address MPs, a gesture of respect only accorded someone deemed a 'special friend' of the Somali nation. The event was considered a way of thanking Türkiye for its swift and impressive humanitarian response to the large-scale famine in Somalia a year earlier, which claimed over 250,000 lives. In 2011, PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan travelled to Mogadishu with his wife to rally humanitarian support-- the first visit of a head of state from outside of Africa in decades. A photo of a distraught Erdogan and his wife clutching two Somali children at an emergency facility for victims, flanked by then-President Somali Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, helped jolt the Muslim world into action. Türkiye convened a summit of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) states and raised over USD 300 million for emergency relief.

Davutoglu, at the end of his speech, dropped a piece of Ottoman hagiography on his stunned Somali audience by referencing Mir Ali Bey,  a 16th-century Ottoman navy buccaneer who incited an ill-fated insurrection by Muslim city-states on the East Coast of Africa (including Mogadishu) against the Portuguese. Without a hint of irony, Davutoglu said, "The instructions of Mir Ali were clear, go and work shoulder to shoulder with people of Somalia in Africa to defend their country, the youngest colonial state… We are the sons and daughters of Mir Ali Bey came back to Somalia after four centuries to share the destiny of Somali people." 

In Somalia and wider East Africa, formal history texts cast Ali Bey as a pirate who plundered and pillaged coastal towns and mobilised Somalis and other African tribes on the Swahili coast to mount a proxy war against the Portuguese on behalf of the Ottoman caliphate. Ali Bey's story has a tragic and ironic twist at the end, however, which Davutoglu conveniently edited out. After his botched campaign to defeat the Portuguese, Bey was trapped in a coastal enclave near Mombasa - sandwiched between an enemy fleet and a fierce African tribe called Wa-Zimba, which legend casts as cannibals. He opted to surrender to the Portuguese and, in his last years, converted to Christianity.

All imperial history is a form of myth-making; Davutoglu's white-wash of Bey certainly wasn't an aberration. What is interesting in the speech, rather, is the implicit sense of  Ankara's new imperial 'mission' – the idea of an activist Pan-Islamic solidarity and internationalism. In essence, to forge a benign Pax Islamica led by altruistic Türkiye. In a way, the former minister was uncannily sketching the leitmotifs of the Turkish projection of power in the Red Sea a decade later. It has become the mindset propelling Ankara's unmissable 'imperial swagger' in Somalia and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Somalia is one the most Turkophile countries (türksever in Turkish) in the world. Turkish flags are everywhere, even in the remotest villages, while the Turkish language is popular in schools in Mogadishu. Thousands of students are airlifted to Türkiye on free scholarships every year. The wealthy fly to Istanbul or Ankara for dental implants and hair transplants, and buy apartments for their children. Markets and shops are laden with 'made in Türkiye' goods and items, and companies such as 'Enza Home' are wildly popular with the middle classes. Turkish Airlines flies directly to Mogadishu and connects Somalia's vast diaspora to the homeland. 

Ankara is also considered the federal government's most dependable ally, with Erdogan's ruling AK Party sharing several parallels with the similarly Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Damul Jadiid faction in Mogadishu. It has forged even deeper ties with the Hassan Sheikh administration in the aftermath of the Somaliland-Ethiopia Memorandum of Understanding in 2024. The TURKSOM military base-- Türkiye's largest in the world-- churns out thousands of new Gorgor recruits for the army. And the prospects of an oil and gas bonanza along with Turkomania are all creating a heady atmosphere of fusion – of a small state being willingly absorbed into a bigger one. When Turkish diplomats come knocking in the capital, there is a growing sense that one cannot refuse their entreats.

But is Türkiye's unique strategic soft power imperilled? Is Somali türksever waning? Anecdotal evidence would seem to suggest a creeping anti-Turkish sentiment at the edges of the country's politics. In January, a prominent academic, Prof Abdi Ismail Samatar, flanked by opposition leaders, berated Türkiye and said Somalia was not for "lease or sale." The comments were widely covered by local media. Stung by the unusual public criticism, Turkish officials contacted a leading Kenyan PR consultant and invited him to Ankara to brainstorm on a media strategy to counter the 'negative narrative.'

Somali hypernationalists have increasingly accused Erdogan of 'betraying' Somalis by affirming Ethiopia's claims to sea access when he brokered an accord in December 2024 in Ankara between Somali President Hassan Sheikh and Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed. They are also incensed by the Turkish strongman's pressure to prevent the federal government from ending the Ethiopian peacekeeping role in south-central Somalia. Others, too, have attacked the scale and depth of the Turkish penetration of the Somali federal architecture, with officials from Ankara pictured on an almost weekly basis with their Mogadishu counterparts and providing alleged kickbacks in numerous bilateral deals. The mimicking of neo-Ottoman rhetoric by senior Somali officials has also generated some churn. Last November, Somalia's Defence Minister Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur presented Turkish energy minister Alparslan Bayraktar with a replica painting of an Ottoman fleet fighting the Portuguese in the Gulf of Aden in the 16th century. Less considered is the intimate ties between Qatar and Turkey, with the former often the 'silent partner' behind Ankara's public wooing of Somalia.

The public criticism of Türkiye and its role in Somalia is positive, not least because it corrects a decade-long Somali misperception and naivety about Ankara. It is not simply neo-Ottoman wishful thinking and altruistic Islamic values that drive Ankara, but hardnosed strategic military and commercial calculations. Just witness the speed and decisiveness with which Türkiye pressed home its advantage in Syria with a distracted Iran and Russia, installing its ally in Damascus. That knowledge may be jarring and disappointing to ardent Somali türksever, but it can be liberating in shattering an abiding illusion that has long prevented Somalis from undertaking a critical assessment of Türkiye.

The Somali Wire Team