It’s hard to miss: the Turkish Airlines plane, which provides daily service between the Somali capital and Istanbul, sits in the middle of the tarmac at Mogadishu international airport, managed by Favori, a Turkish company. A few hundred meters away, the port, Somalia’s main source of income, can be seen, the operation of which has also been attributed to a Turkish concessionaire. In the city center, red flags bearing the crescent and the star line the asphalt roads, the work of the Turkish development agency, or the square of the city’s main medical establishment, the Recep Tayyip Erdogan hospital, named in tribute to the Turkish president.
In Mogadishu, Turkey is everywhere. Established in Somalia for around ten years, particularly in the sectors of construction, development, military cooperation, health and education, it is today the country’s leading economic partner. An influence mixing politics and economics, and which is exercised through a powerful business network, made up in particular of companies close to the presidential party of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AKP.
The Turkish president visited Somalia for the first time in 2011. At the time, the country was facing a terrible famine. The Ankara strongman, then prime minister, is the first non-African leader to come to Mogadishu since the outbreak of the civil war in 1991. The risks are considerable. The capital, in ruins, is the scene of urban fighting with the Chabab Islamists (affiliated with Al Qaeda). The Turkish head of state’s plane almost crashed when landing on an unusable runway and will have to charter a second aircraft for the return flight to Ankara.
Came officially “help a Muslim country, a brother country”, Recep Tayyip Erdogan then offered 350 million euros that he had raised from the member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. But he did not travel alone: an imposing delegation of businessmen also made the trip. In 2011, Somalia is a failed state. Everything has to be built or rebuilt. A very risky gamble, which paid off for Ankara.
The Turks, who have paid a billion and a half dollars in aid to Somalia, now control the country’s main entry points. They built their largest embassy abroad, the country’s largest hospital, and established a military center to train Somali troops. Despite the instability, business is thriving: in addition to the thirty or so Turkish companies there, Somalia mainly imports Turkish products – food, medicines, construction materials – for nearly 500 million euros per year.
“The Turks are very efficient, they did extraordinarily well in Somalia, assures Roland Marchal, researcher at the International Research Center (CERI) at Sciences Po Paris. Ankara has a long and sustained approach, political and economic, it manages to achieve both development and trade. »
“Everyone thought we were crazy at the time! », remembers the Turkish ambassador in Mogadishu, Ibrahim Mete Yagli, from his immense embassy built in 2016, the first to be located in the city center and not behind the imposing ramparts of the secure green zone. Few diplomats then dared to venture into this minefield, preferring to follow the evolution of the Somali powder keg from neighboring Kenya.
Even today, Turkey wants to give the impression of disinterested diplomacy. “We give more than we receive in Somalia”, says Ibrahim Mete Yagli, hand on heart. He nevertheless admits: “We are very interested to Somali natural resources. » In January 2020, Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not hide his ambitions for the oil present off the coast of Somalia, half of the blocks of which have yet to be allocated.
“We are the brothers of the Somalis”
But the heart of Turkish activities in Somalia remains infrastructure. The embassy, on the sea side, offers a breathtaking view of the Mogadishu coastline and the port, operated for ten years by the Albayrak company. Taxes on port traffic are the main source of revenue for the Somali state. According to a group of UN experts, the contract signed between Mogadishu and Albayrak allows the company to capture 45% of the port’s gross revenues.
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Officials from the group, which supports the AKP, were on the first trip to Somalia in 2011. “We are the brothers of the Somalis, we did not come here to make a profit but to help them”, assures Ahmet Sami, the company’s country director. The group was, however, entrusted with lucrative contracts by the Turkish government: the construction of its embassy, its military base, the Erdogan hospital and the Somali Parliament.
As early as 2016, the UN group of experts was concerned “the opacity of the contracts concluded between the Somali authorities and the Turkish companies responsible for the management of the port and airport of Mogadishu”. The organization Transparency International placed Somalia last in its global corruption rankings in 2022.
The links between the Somali government and its Turkish partner seem indeed very close, as evidenced by the brand new villa that the Favori company, responsible for operating the airport, is preparing to offer to President Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud. In return for its investments, Erdogan’s Turkey also obtained the complete closure of all establishments belonging to Hizmet, the influential movement of the Turkish president’s main opponent, imam Fethullah Gülen.
Initially competing with the Gulf countries, Turkey today finds itself without a serious rival in Somalia. Many investors still fear chronic instability and terrorist attacks. “The Turks have understood that we cannot do business here without investing massively in security”, specifies Aweis Ahmed, director of the Somali Public Agenda research center in Mogadishu. According to him, Ankara’s awareness came in particular after the attacks by Al-Shabaab against Turkish interests and nationals.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made the fight against the Islamists affiliated with Al Qaeda his own. He inaugurated Turksom in 2017. The military base, the largest outside Turkey, spans four square kilometers in Mogadishu. Turkish officers have already trained nearly a third of the Somali troops there, within the “Gorgor” unit, who are “effective on the battlefield and realistic from an economic point of view”, according to Roland Marchal. They are now fighting on the front line of the government offensive against the Shabab, benefiting in the process from the support of Turkish Bayraktar drones.
“Our defense efforts aim to prepare the Somali army for the end of the African Union mission [UA] », adds Ambassador Ibrahim Mete Yagli. The 17,500 soldiers of the AU peacekeeping mission, present for seventeen years, must withdraw in December 2024. Their departure raises fears of a security vacuum. “Fighting against Al-Shabaab takes time and money but we will get there”, concludes the diplomat. It is as much in the interest of Somalia as it is in the interest of its first economic partner.