Turkey opens military base in Mogadishu to train Somali soldiers

Turkey opened its biggest overseas military base on Saturday in Somalia’s capital, cementing its ties with the volatile but strategic Muslim nation and building a presence in East Africa.

More than 10,000 Somali soldiers will be trained by Turkish officers at the base, a senior Turkish official said ahead of a ceremony in Mogadishu attended by Turkish military chief of staff Hulusi Akar.

The opening of the $50 million base signals ever-closer ties between Turkey and Somalia.Turkey’s relations with the Horn of Africa date back to the Ottoman Empire, but President Tayyip Erdogan’s government has become a close ally of the Somali government in recent years.

At the opening ceremony on Saturday, Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire thanked the Turkish government for opening the training school and said it would help the government “reconstruct” its national force, that is:

not based on clan…not from a particular place, but well-trained forces that represent the Somali people

He noted that the military school was Turkey’s biggest overseas. The facility can train and house 1,000 soldiers at a time and also has sports courts and a running track.

Analysts say that, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, as Turkey’s foreign policy forays close to home have floundered, Ankara has found a willing partner in Somalia.

“It’s a country where Turkey could make a difference without necessarily having to compete with regional or global powers,” said Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Ankara’s initial focus on aid, as oppposed to security assistance or overt backing of political parties, helped build trust, he added.

Read: Turkish students go to Somalia to renovate school

Winning Hearts and Minds

Turkey’s vast aid effort at the height of the 2011 famine endeared it to many Somali people, and it has continued to pour in aid, much of it from private companies.

It has built schools, hospitals and infrastructure and provided scholarships for Somalis to study in Turkey. Erdogan has visited Mogadishu twice, and when he made his first trip there in 2011 he became the first non-African leader to visit the war-ravaged nation in 20 years.

Rapidly growing trade between the two nations has followed. In 2010, Turkish exports to Somalia totalled just $5.1 million. By last year, they had ballooned to $123 million. In the space of six years Turkey has gone from Somalia’s 20th-largest source of imports to its fifth-largest.

Opinion: Turkey’s role in global stability