Turkey’s Engagement in Somalia: A Security Perspective

Somalia-Turkey relation has been resumed when then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Mogadishu in August 2011. Turkey has recently opened a military training facility in Mogadishu. Since then, Turkey's security engagement in Somalia created some sort of concern for the former actors in Mogadishu's political arena. Almost all studies about this relation explore Turkey's economic and humanitarian contributions to Somalia. Contrarily, this paper focuses on the security dimension of this relation and tries to define the security interests of Turkey in its engagement in Somalia. More on, the paper investigates the current security situati on of Somalia, examines the nature of the Turkish military facility and discusses the challenges facing Turkey in Somalia.