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.