By Isha Qarsoon

Every Somali understands that Ethiopia pursues Ethiopian interests. Nobody is surprised when Kenya advances Kenyan interests. No one expects the United States, China, the United Arab Emirates, or Britain to place Somalia’s interests above their own. That is the nature of international politics. States exist to advance the welfare, security, and prosperity of their own people. Their generosity may be genuine, their partnerships sincere, but their foreign policy ultimately serves their national interest. Yet somehow Turkey escaped this basic rule in the Somali imagination. It became the one foreign power that many Somalis stopped analyzing as a foreign power. Instead, it came to be viewed as a brother, a friend, an exception to the normal rules of statecraft. That perception, more than any agreement or investment, may prove to be Turkey’s greatest achievement in Somalia.

To say this is not to deny Turkey’s contribution. It arrived when many others stayed away. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Mogadishu at a time when such visits were politically risky. Turkish hospitals treated Somali patients. Roads were built. Scholarships were awarded. Businesses invested. Military officers were trained. Turkish officials spoke a language of partnership and dignity rather than charity or tutelage. These are facts, not propaganda, and Somalis had every reason to welcome them. Gratitude was entirely appropriate. But gratitude and strategic judgment are not the same thing. The mistake was not embracing Turkey as a partner. The mistake was concluding that Turkey, unlike every other state, had somehow ceased to pursue Turkish interests.

That conclusion has shaped Somali politics in ways that few people appreciate. The greatest influence is often the influence that no longer appears to be influence. Once a foreign government acquires a reputation for exceptional goodwill, scrutiny fades. Agreements that would provoke fierce national debate if signed with another country are accepted with little discussion because they involve the trusted friend. Skepticism is dismissed as ingratitude. Questions become politically awkward. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, a foreign state’s intentions cease to be examined with the same discipline applied to everyone else.

This is not because Turkey deceived Somalis. Rather, Somalis gradually stopped asking the questions that every sovereign nation should ask of every foreign government. What does this country seek? How does this agreement advance its interests? What are the long-term consequences for ours? These are not hostile questions. They are the ordinary questions of a politically mature society. Friendship does not eliminate the need to ask them. If anything, friendship makes them more important, because trust has a way of lowering our guard.

Seen through this lens, Turkey’s expanding role in Somalia appears less as a series of unrelated developments and more as a coherent progression. It began with humanitarian engagement and public goodwill. It expanded into infrastructure and commerce. From there it moved naturally into military cooperation and institutional presence. Turkey became a principal security partner, trained elite Somali forces, assumed important operational responsibilities, and steadily deepened its relationship with the presidency. None of these developments, viewed in isolation, seemed alarming. Each could be defended on its own merits. Yet foreign influence is rarely accumulated in a single dramatic step. It grows incrementally, each stage making the next appear entirely reasonable.

The pattern became clearer as Turkey’s role expanded beyond traditional cooperation into sectors that will shape Somalia’s future prosperity. The hydrocarbons agreement was not simply another investment contract. It placed Turkey in a privileged position within Somalia’s emerging petroleum sector. More recently, attention has turned to cooperation in the country’s mineral resources, suggesting that petroleum may represent the beginning rather than the culmination of a broader economic relationship. Again, each agreement can be defended individually.

Collectively, however, they reveal a foreign partner whose influence now extends across security, infrastructure, diplomacy, and strategic natural resources. That combination deserves careful examination, not because Turkey is uniquely malevolent, but because no foreign state should occupy such a broad position in another country’s affairs without rigorous public scrutiny.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of this changing relationship came during the crisis triggered by Ethiopia’s memorandum of understanding with Somaliland. At one of the most difficult diplomatic moments faced by the Federal Government, Turkey emerged as the indispensable intermediary. It possessed the relationships, credibility, and access necessary to engage both Mogadishu and Addis Ababa. Somalia needed Turkey’s diplomatic support.

Turkey, by contrast, did not depend upon Somalia in the same way. That imbalance should have prompted a national conversation about the implications of relying so heavily upon one external partner while simultaneously negotiating agreements affecting the country’s strategic resources. Instead, the two developments were largely discussed as though they existed in separate worlds.

International politics does not work that way. States accumulate political capital over many years and deploy it when opportunities arise. There is nothing unusual about this. The United States does it. China does it. The Gulf states do it. Turkey does it. Successful governments convert goodwill into influence, influence into access, and access into opportunities that advance their national interests. The remarkable aspect of Somalia’s experience is not that Turkey has behaved like a state. It is that so many Somalis continue to discuss Turkey as though it were something other than a state.

This is where the focus must shift from Ankara to Mogadishu. The central question is not whether Turkey is pursuing Turkish interests. Of course it is. Every responsible government should. The real question is why Somali institutions have become so willing to concentrate political, security, economic, and diplomatic relationships in a single foreign partner without developing equally strong mechanisms of constitutional oversight and public accountability. Every major agreement bears Somali signatures. Every concession is approved by Somali officials. Every expansion of foreign influence reflects a decision taken within Somali institutions. Foreign governments cannot surrender powers that do not belong to them. Only Somalis can do that.

For too long we have explained Somalia’s difficulties by pointing outward. Foreign interference has become the default explanation for nearly every political failure. There is truth in that accusation, but it is only half the story. External actors can exploit weaknesses that already exist; they cannot create constitutional indifference, institutional fragility, or executive overreach on their own. Those are domestic failures. When foreign governments discover that important decisions can be negotiated through a narrow circle of political actors rather than through resilient institutions, they naturally adapt their diplomacy to that reality. The responsibility for changing it lies not with Ankara, Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Washington, or Beijing. It lies with us.

This is why the debate over Turkey should not become an exercise in resentment. Turkey owes its first duty to the Turkish people. No one should expect otherwise. The burden of protecting Somalia’s sovereignty rests entirely upon Somali shoulders. That protection does not require rejecting foreign investment or abandoning international partnerships. It requires something much more difficult: the discipline to distinguish gratitude from judgment and friendship from permanent alignment of interests. Nations that fail to make that distinction eventually discover that they have confused trust with strategy.

The greatest natural resource Turkey has acquired in Somalia may not be oil or minerals. It is trust. Trust is what allowed Turkey to become the one foreign power that many Somalis stopped questioning. Trust reduced the political cost of expanding influence into ever more strategic sectors. Trust made extraordinary agreements appear ordinary because they were concluded with an extraordinary friend. Yet trust, however well deserved, can never substitute for constitutional safeguards, institutional balance, or vigilant public scrutiny. A sovereign nation does not suspend critical judgment because it admires a partner. It applies the same standards to every foreign government precisely because it values that partnership enough to place it on a durable and transparent foundation.

Somalia does not need fewer friends. It needs a clearer understanding of what friendship means in international politics. A true partner should welcome transparent institutions, constitutional procedures, parliamentary oversight, and informed public debate because those are the foundations of legitimate and enduring cooperation. Relationships that depend upon unquestioning trust are inherently fragile. Relationships that survive rigorous scrutiny are the ones that endure.

History will not judge Turkey harshly for advancing Turkish interests. That is what governments exist to do. History will judge Somalia by a different standard. It will ask whether Somali leaders and Somali citizens remembered that protecting Somalia’s interests is their responsibility alone. The day a nation stops asking what another state wants is the day it begins to lose something more valuable than territory or natural resources. It begins to lose the habit of thinking like a sovereign people.

Isha Qarsoon
Email:  Ishaqarsoon1@gmail.com
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Isha Qarsoon- is a platform dedicated to addressing critical issues pertaining to good governance, corruption, and social challenges.
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