Erdogan’s tricks and poisons to penetrate Horn of Africa

Ahmed Adel

Since Recep Tayyip Erdogan became president of Turkey, he has used his position to support terrorist movements, especially in the Horn of Africa, as he has always sought to establish a foothold in that region to control its natural resources.

Somalia

Erdogan told the world press in January that the Somali government submitted a request to Turkey asking it to prospect for gas and oil off its coast, revealing Ankara’s true face in the Horn of Africa.

NTV quoted Erdogan as saying that oil exploration in Somali regional waters will generate a significant return for the Turkish economy.

Turkey has been a major aid donor to Somalia following a famine in 2011. Ankara provided aid through the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) as a way to strengthen its influence in the country, which overlooks one of the most important maritime straits in the world, where energy and oil materials are transported to Europe via the Red Sea.

Influence

Turkey is working to increase its influence in the Horn of Africa, especially Somalia. To this end, it opened the largest Turkish military base abroad in the Somali capital Mogadishu in October 2017. Then-Turkish Army Chief of Staff Hulusi Akar confirmed at the time that Turkish officers would train more than 10,000 Somali soldiers at the base.

This base, which includes three military schools along with other facilities, is the largest Turkish military training camp outside Turkey. The volume of trade exchanged between Turkey and Somalia also reached about $100 million just until 2017.

Turkey’s allegations

Turkey claims that the base is aimed at helping the Somali government face terrorist groups, but the reality confirms otherwise, as international reports show that Ankara was supporting terrorist and extremist groups in order to bring stability to the country so that Turkey could continue its interventions, like in Libya.

Hidden relationship with terrorism

In January 2019, the Nordic Monitor website revealed that the US government had obtained information about Turkish intelligence having a hidden relationship with terrorist movements in Somalia. According to the website, the information obtained from judicial documents confirms that Ankara sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Somali Al-Shabaab movement through a client who was a former prisoner in Guantanamo Bay.

The report pointed out that the US government informed Ankara of the matter and requested an investigation to uncover the terrorist network that is financing the extremist movement. But the Erdogan government halted investigations launched after the notification sent by the office of then-Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen.

Turkey’s relationship with Al-Shabaab, which is loyal to al-Qaeda, is hidden and may sometimes appear in the form of a kind of hostility, but at the core they share common interests, which are carried out through Brotherhood mediators. In February 2018, Brotherhood-affiliated Somali Council of Scholars chairman Bashir Salad revealed the existence of strong relations and common interests between the Erdogan regime and the terrorist Al-Shabaab movement, allowing Ankara to be the only one capable of mediating between the movement and the Somali government, according to his statements to the Turkish Anadolu Agency. “Turkey is a major country that can play a role in how to contain and end the Somali crisis,” he said.

Djibouti and Eritrea

In December 2016, Turkey signed an agreement with Djibouti to establish a free trade zone amounting to 12 million square meters, with an expected economic capability of $1 trillion.

At the beginning of 2019, Turkey inaugurated the office of the Eritrean Scholars Association, which issues public statements against both Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Eritrea reported that Turkey has been trying since late 2018 to impede the completion of the peace process and developments in the relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia in particular, and the Horn of Africa region in general.