Ankara’s assertive intervention in the deadly famine and its ambitious decade-long engagement in Somalia’s state-building process has significantly increased its influence across East Africa.

Turkey and Somalia have marked a decade in their ever-growing ties that began with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s breakthrough visit to the war-torn country ten years ago this month. 

To mark the milestone, Ankara and Mogadishu announced they will annually celebrate “Somali-Turkey” day on August 19, the day the Turkish planes, defying warnings of attacks, landed in the country. 

The year 2011 was extremely tough for Somalia. Whilst suffering at the hands of two decades of civil war with clan-based warlords, rival politicians and Al Shabab militant group fighting for control, a devastating famine hit its shores hard. Above all, innocent civilians paid the ultimate price for lawlessness and lack of urgent action for humanitarian assistance. 

Even at the height of the famine, the pictures of starving children did not convince Western actors to help take action. They withheld the aid, claiming it could fall into the hands of militants and left nearly a quarter-million people -half of them children- to die. 

Embroiled in a deadly mix of lawlessness, civil war and famine, Somalia was considered a no-go zone by much of the world.

That’s when Turkey stepped in. In a landmark visit, Erdogan along with his ministers, state officials and planes of humanitarian aid landed in Mogadishu in August 2011, the first non-African leader to do so in almost two decades. 

“The tragedy going on here is a test for civilisation”, Erdogan said after visiting overcrowded refugee camps and crumbling hospitals in Mogadishu. 

The visit prompted the biggest humanitarian campaign in Turkish history. Within two months, the public donations and state funds combined reached $300 million. Ankara also organised an emergency meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and convinced the member states to gather $350 million for a famine relief package. 

While hundreds of Turkish aid workers, doctors and state officials flocked in to establish field hospitals, shelters and delivered medical and food aid to the displaced people, Turkish Airlines became the first international airline to launch direct flights to Somalia in over two decades. 

Turkish ambassador to Somalia Mehmet Yilmaz said the intervention drew global attention to the situation in Somalia. 

“Only after the Turkish intervention, most of the international organisations and diplomatic missions began to operate in Somalia,” Yilmaz told TRT World. 

Turkey’s humanitarian assistance continued even after the United Nations declared the end of famine in 2012. In the same year, Somalia was the second-largest recipient of emergency aid and the fifth-largest recipient of overall aid from Turkey. 

The Turkish allyship has challenged “the conspirational worldview that the African country is a no-go zone characterised by violent terrorism, anarchy and destitute”, Abdinor Dahir, a political analyst at the University of Oxford told TRT World. 

As Ankara’s help “resuscitated Somalia from near death”, it also helped the re-establishment of the authority in the war-torn country. The first formal parliament in more than 20 years was sworn in and MPs elected a new president in the first presidential election held in Somalia since 1967.

From emergency aid to the state-building process

Once the impact of devastating famine was averted, Ankara knew emergency aid alone couldn’t bring sustainable development and stability. Hence, Turkey diversified its engagement, undertaking a wide range of initiatives ranging from humanitarian projects, development aid and post-conflict state-building in the war-torn country.

Recurring crises cannot be solved by only emergency aid, Mehmet Yilmaz, the Turkish ambassador to Somalia explains. 

“State-building and sustainable development are the long term solutions to prevent crises from reoccurring. And the establishment and maintaining of state authority are only possible with a strong security apparatus. Hence, we prioritised these concepts,” Yilmaz told TRT World. 

Since then, while Turkish state and non-state actors have been on the ground distributing aid, Turkey has transformed the capital by launching major infrastructure projects, including roads, schools, hospitals and state institutions and the parliament. 

As Somalia became a high priority in Turkey’s foreign policy, Ankara built the largest Turkish embassy in the Somali capital. Turkish companies reconstructed the Mogadishu seaport, the airport and secured contracts for the management and maintenance of the country’s two largest sources of revenues.

“The one thing that Ankara has done right is evolving its humanitarian diplomacy to a more bilateral engagement with a multidimensional impact. This approach implies the need to build the capacity of the Somali state to deliver service provisions in the health, education and security sectors,” Dr Mohammed Ibrahim Shire, a senior lecturer in Security and Risk at the University of Portsmouth told TRT World.  And the public visibility of Turkish assistance, Dr Shire says, has made a big difference for many Somali citizens who haven’t received state provisions since the collapse of the government in 1991.

Read more: A decade of Turkey’s rise in Somalia

Source: trtworld.com