Turkey’s other war: Somalia

Turkey opened Camp TURKSOM, military base and academy, in Mogadishu, Somalia in 2017 with the Chief of the Turkish General Staff, General Hulusi Akar, present. It can accommodate 200 Turkish military personnel and is slated to graduate over 10,000 Somali soldiers. Lying as it does immediately across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, its role in the ongoing war in the latter nation warrants investigation (see below).

In February the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan extended the deployment of the Turkish Navy in the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea and the territorial waters of Somalia for another year.

Erdoğan was the first Turkish head of state to ever visit Sudan when he traveled to the mainland and to Suakin Island in the Red Sea in 2017. At the time reports surfaced that Turkey planned to build a military base on the island, but with the…