What does Turkey’s presence in Somalia provide to anyone?

The Presidential Memorandum, which foresees the Turkish Armed Forces to serve in Somalia for 2 years, was accepted in the Turkish Grand National Assembly the other day. The memorandum, signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and sent to the Presidency of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, stated that within the scope of the agreements in force between Turkey and Somalia, training, assistance and consultancy activities aimed at ensuring security and stability in Somalia are ongoing, and that support has been provided for over 10 years together with the international community to ensure that Somali defense and security forces are restructured and reach the capacity to “fight terrorism.”

Located on the eastern tip of Africa, Somalia is home to Turkey’s largest overseas military base. The TURKSOM Military Training Base was officially opened on September 30, 2017, with a ceremony chaired by then Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar and Somali Prime Minister Hasan Ali Haire. Construction of the base took two years and cost approximately $50 million.

Turkey has a military presence in more than 10 countries on three continents: Asia, Africa and Europe. While Turkey has assigned soldiers to Iraq, Syria, Qatar, Somalia, TRNC and Libya on its own initiative, excluding the United Nations (UN) and NATO missions, Somalia should also be added as a special topic in addition to the well-known intense interest in the TRNC and Syria.

As relations with Somalia developed rapidly after Erdoğan’s visit in 2011 as prime minister, Turkey’s military presence increased in parallel and became almost permanent.

While Osman Kavala is being persistently kept in prison by being associated with ‘Soros’ over and over again, without any regard for international law, Soros’ words in his speech at Sabancı University on March 2, 2002, “Turkey’s best export product is the army” seem to be operating as a covert government policy.

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When discussing the reasons for such an anchoring in Somalia, the political dimension of the issue cannot be understood correctly without looking at the economic dimension. In other words, whenever you have difficulty understanding the issue, you will call for the Marxist method to help.

When you look at the ‘Turkish-Somali Business Council’ page on the internet, you see the following names as the Executive Board:

• “Ahmet Sami İşler (President) Albayrak Tourism Travel Construction Trade Inc.
• Levent Güngör (Member) Albayrak Group of Companies
• Trabzon Port Management Inc.
• Levent Özyurt (Member) Özyurt Mining Construction Industry and Trade Inc.
• Salim Metin (Member) Corbus Steel Industry and Trade Inc.

Well A business council profile related to the Palace. In the July 2022 Somali Information Note on the page, we come across the following information under the title ‘Turkey-Somalia Trade’: “In trade between Turkey and Somalia, Turkey is generally a net exporter. While Turkey’s exports to Somalia were below 100 million USD before 2016, they increased to 126 million USD this year. In the following period, they continued to increase and rose to 355 million USD in 2021. In other words, Turkey’s exports to Somalia have increased by 196 percent in the last 6 years. In the first 5 months of 2022, exports to Somalia increased by 29 percent compared to the same period of the previous year, reaching 156 million USD.”

In other words, while we say that we are providing training to Somali soldiers and ‘protecting them from pirates’, the subtext also mentions an export that has increased by 196 percent in the last six years as of 2022. Just because the government spokespeople in Turkey constantly talk about the ‘national economy’, don’t think that this export income goes into the pockets of the people in Turkey. Think of this as the skill of the bosses close to the government to pay zero taxes while increasing their profits, which is featured in the headline news of our newspaper and brought to the Parliament. While minimum wage workers and laborers are condemned to the hunger threshold and retirees are condemned to monthly salaries that can only be called ‘social assistance’, names close to the government are making more money in Somalia, as they do in Turkey.

For example, when we go to the Trabzon Port Operations page belonging to the Albayraklar Group of Companies, the following is stated under the title “Mogadishu Port”: “Having a strategic location in East Africa, Mogadishu Port is Somalia’s only and largest port opening up to the world. In accordance with the agreement made with the Somali government in 2014, the Albayrak Group acquired the port’s operating rights for 20 years. After the port was taken over, it was developed with modern equipment along with many infrastructure developments. With the second phase investments, the capacity and business volume of Mogadishu Port will increase significantly, and service quality will continue to improve.” In other words, things are going well for Albayraklar.

Meanwhile, let us also recall that in recent months, news has emerged that the formation called the Syrian National Army, under the command and control of Turkey, has sent mercenaries to Niger, Burkina Faso and Nigeria. In Turkey, the poor who cannot make ends meet with their salaries should be proud to watch the news “We are even training Somalia’s soldiers” on the state television, financed by their own taxes, and be happy with their export revenues (!) That’s enough for them! Because, as the President said, the rest is ‘hostility towards capital’!

Source: What does Turkey’s presence in Somalia bring to anyone? – Fatih Polat – Evrensel