The Turkish National Assembly’s decision to extend Ankara’s military presence in Somalia for two years and to expand its hydrocarbon research mission, under the protection of a Turkish armada, is the culmination of its policy Recep Tayyip Erdogan for systematic penetration into the Horn of Africa and the entire African continent.
An infiltration – the Africa Action Plan – originally conceived in the Turkish Foreign Ministry in 1998, when the “deep state” was sending Erdogan to prison, and updated in 2003 after he came to power.
Economic and defense agreements
In 2008, Turkey had 10 embassies in African countries. Today it has embassies and consulates in 44 of the 54 countries in Africa, while with 30 of them it has concluded economic and military agreements, penetrating all sectors, from defense and the exploitation of wealth-producing sources to humanitarian actions, religion and culture.
Turkey is claiming a share from major players in the region (China, USA, Russia) by taking advantage of the declining influence of former colonial powers (France), sometimes in cooperation and sometimes in competition with regional economic powers such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, Turkish Airlines operates flights to more than 60 destinations in Africa.
The Turkish-Somali memorandum, signed on July 18 in Istanbul, the third since the beginning of the year, grants Turkey exclusive rights to explore and exploit hydrocarbons in three offshore plots, 5,000 sq. kilometers each, two of them 50 km off the Somali coast and the third at a distance of 100 km from the coast, “within the limits of Somalia’s maritime jurisdiction”. For this purpose, the research vessel “Oruc Reis” will sail to the area with five escort vessels at the end of September and beginning of October.
The disagreements of the opposition
Erdogan’s presidential decree on Somalia was voted down by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy and Equality Party (DEM) in a heated debate in Parliament last Saturday that turned into a dogma challenge of the Blue Homeland, with the CHP MP Namik Tan (former ambassador to Israel and the US) to call it a “fairy tale”.
Erdogan denounced the official opposition for “irresponsibility, ignorance and inconsistency”, as well as for a short-sighted approach on all issues “from drilling in the Eastern Mediterranean to a balanced stance on the Russia-Ukraine war”.
The CHP considers the operation to be poorly planned, putting the country in danger and endangering the Turkish navy, which is simultaneously carrying out missions in the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The leadership of Somaliland, a region that seceded from Somalia in 1991 on the borders of the former British protectorate of the same name and has about 6 million inhabitants, but is not recognized by the international community, expressed its opposition to the Turkish plans.
. The dispute involves neighboring Ethiopia, which seeks an outlet to the Red Sea through an alliance with Somaliland, but is threatened with war by Somalia. Turkish diplomacy mediates between Somalia and Ethiopia, hosted a first round of talks in Ankara in early July and plans another round in September.
The big leap in Somalia was made by Erdogan in 2011, when he visited Mogadishu as prime minister and offered humanitarian aid to the country, which was suffering from drought after the bloody civil war. Two more visits by Erdogan followed, while in 2017 Turkey’s first base in Africa was created in Mogadishu.
Thousands of Somali soldiers passed through the base of Mogadishu, many of them were retrained in Turkey, while Ankara equipped the government forces fighting with the Americans the Islamic organization Al Shabaab, a branch of Al Qaeda, with drones. In the name of fighting terrorism, the US also maintains bases in Somalia.
From Djibouti to Sudan and Libya
Turkey has also set foot in neighboring Djibouti, which guards the entrance to the Red Sea from the African coast, signing a new military cooperation agreement this year. Further north, on the Sudanese coast, Ankara has since 2018 secured control of the Suakin port for 99 years by concluding a concession agreement with Sudan. Suakin was part of the Ottoman Empire for three centuries.
Bayraktar drones, Turkish “advisors”, Islamic mercenaries from Syria and finally the Turkish army saved the Libyan interim government from the forces of Gen. Khalifa Haftar in 2019, in the civil war that followed the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.
Turkish construction companies have lost billions of dollars on projects taken over by Gaddafi, but Ankara has turned the losses into an opportunity by intervening militarily in the former Ottoman empire, securing new concession contracts and the illegal Turkish-Libyan memorandum that is trying to create a deed in the Mediterranean at the expense of Greece. The Turkish military in Tripoli and other areas of Libya are counted in the thousands.
They are also approaching Niger
Days before the Turkish parliament gave the green light to send the armada to Somalia, a high-ranking Turkish delegation traveled to Niger, the West African country from which the junta expelled French military forces and French uranium mining companies this year.
“As in Somalia, we discussed ways to improve the country’s defense capability and combat terrorism, which is the main source of instability in the Sahel region.” said the Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidanformer head of the MIT secret service.
Interest in uranium mines has been expressed by Russia and Turkey, who are already cooperating in the construction of the first Turkish nuclear plant in Akuyu, while they are discussing two more nuclear plants, one in Sinop and the other in Eastern Thrace.
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