From aid to F-16s: Turkey's hard-power turn in Somalia

Turkey’s late-January deployment of F-16 fighter jets to Somalia marked the most visible escalation yet in Ankara’s long-running engagement in the Horn of Africa.

While Turkish officials have framed the move as support for Somalia’s fight against Al-Shabab, the decision to forward-deploy manned combat aircraft, alongside helicopters, naval assets and expanded ground involvement, signals a deeper shift in Ankara’s role in the region.

Rather than being a sudden pivot, it marks the hardening of a strategy more than a decade in the making. Ankara first developed strong ties with Somalia after coming to its aid in 2011 following the famine and drought that struck the country.

Then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit that year - the first from a non-African leader in nearly two decades - helped Ankara boost its soft power, positioning Turkey as a key partner of Mogadishu going forward.

Ankara calculates that just as Erdogan's visit to Somalia in 2011, as the whole world was disengaging, was long remembered, so too will recent military support, Alper Coşkun, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The New Arab.

“The positive perception created among Somalians through these deployments will be equally forceful and long-lasting,” he added.

More than a decade on, that partnership has taken on a very different character. At least three upgraded F-16 Vipers arrived at Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport on 28 January, accompanied by T129 ATAK helicopters.

Turkish cargo aircraft had reportedly prepared hangars and facilities in advance. Videos circulating online showed the jets flying low over the capital, their presence unmistakable.

Turkey has used drones extensively in Somalia before and has trained thousands of Somali troops at Camp TURKSOM since 2017. It has also invested in infrastructure, managed the airport and port, and expanded humanitarian projects. But this is the first time Ankara has stationed high-end manned combat aircraft in the country.

“This looks less like a change of model and more like an escalation in the means Turkey is willing to use to defend what it has already built in Somalia,” Riccardo Gasco, a PhD Researcher at the University of Bologna and Visiting Research Fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center (IPC), told The New Arab.

“Analytically, the shift is from ‘security partnership’ to ‘security partnership plus asset-protection and escalation dominance,’ aimed at raising the costs of disruption by Al-Shabab and by any actor tempted to apply pressure through the maritime domain,” Gasco added.

Turkey is moving beyond capacity-building in Somalia, now adding deterrence through infrastructure, energy projects, and maritime access. The recent F-16 deployment aligns with increased Turkish involvement against Al-Shabab and naval operations to secure offshore exploration.

With new oil and gas agreements, Turkey’s commercial interests in Somalia are now closely tied to security on land and at sea. That carries consequences for the region’s geopolitical balance.

“It deepens Ankara’s commitment by hardening the footprint around strategic infrastructure and economic interests, but it also increases entanglement risk: once you militarily secure energy and critical projects, you inherit more of Somalia’s internal and regional threat environment,” Gasco said.

Protecting assets, therefore, brings exposure, and Turkey is tying itself more tightly to Somalia’s political and security trajectory. This issue extends beyond asset protection, however, and demonstrates Ankara’s evolving perspective on the Horn of Africa.

Due to the region’s geostrategic significance, Ankara’s involvement supports not only its policy toward Somalia but also establishes a strategic connection between the Red Sea corridor and the Indian Ocean.

As a result, Somalia is not just a partner state; it is a strategic platform and a position along a maritime corridor that links the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and wider Indian Ocean sea lanes.

“In this sense, Somalia becomes both a partner-capacity theatre and a platform for wider maritime reach,” Gasco added.

“Turkey’s move is likely to incentivise counter-positioning by other actors pushing the Horn-Red Sea interface toward greater militarisation.”

The presence of a Turkish air unit in Mogadishu, supplemented by naval security for offshore operations, elevates the deterrence level against interference from both militant groups and competing regional parties.

In an already volatile region, marked by increasing economic, political, and military engagement from diverse geopolitical actors, from China to Gulf Cooperation Council states, Ankara’s steps have the potential to intensify these dynamics.

In such an environment, deterrence is inherently interactive rather than unilateral, as an enhanced posture by one actor tends to prompt recalibration by others.

Alper Coşkun says the deployment should not be read as adventurism but framed within Turkey’s broader security posture.

“Enabling a strategically located, friendly country like Somalia and supporting its stability and institution-building efforts make sense for Ankara in this regard,” he said.

“These deployments confirm Turkey's long-term commitment to Somalia and, importantly, introduce a strong deterrent element as it broadens its engagement.”

The subtext is that Turkey is “all in” on Somalia, the analyst said, with this posture serving a dual function of consolidating confidence in Mogadishu while elevating the deterrence threshold vis-à-vis competing actors. The signal to the US is that Ankara is ready to shoulder serious responsibilities.

Coşkun notes that Turkey and the United States are collaborating closely in counterterrorism operations in Somalia and laying the groundwork for energy exploration. The F-16 deployment, therefore, reinforces alignment in one arena, even as Ankara asserts strategic autonomy in others.

At the same time, the analyst points to tension with other regional actors, noting “a challenge from Israel and the UAE, which advocate fragmentation, undermining Ankara's desire to uphold central rule and stability”.

In December 2025, Israel became the first country to recognise Somaliland, Somalia’s breakaway region, as an independent state. The move came against the backdrop of the UAE’s long-standing investment in Somaliland’s Berbera Port since 2017, a project that has strengthened Dubai’s position as a regional commercial hub and the broader Emirati economic footprint in the Red Sea.

This has fuelled speculation of Turkey forming a counter-alignment with Saudi Arabia. In early February, Riyadh signed a military agreement with Somalia following a visit by Somali Defence Minister Ahmed Moallim Fiqi.

While the details remain unclear, Riyadh is doubling down on its support for Somalia’s territorial integrity, placing it at odds with Abu Dhabi.

Backing Somalia’s central government with hard power narrows the room for rivals to operate through sub-state channels.

Yet while Turkey may seek to counter Israel’s growing footprint, it is unlikely to directly challenge the UAE, preferring instead to maintain balance amid the Saudi-Emirati rivalry.

After all, since late 2020, Ankara has pursued rapprochement with both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi after years of tension stemming from their support for rival sides following the 2011 Arab uprisings. That period included an unofficial economic boycott of Turkey. Since then, their ties, including Turkey’s drone sales to the UAE from 2022, have accompanied expanding bilateral military and investment ties.

Turkey’s engagement in Somalia began as humanitarian outreach when others stepped back, evolving into training and infrastructure. Now it includes combat aircraft and maritime protection. “From aid to advisory support to overt deterrence, the trajectory is cumulative,” said Coşkun.

Ultimately, Turkey’s F-16s in Somalia and growing footprint signal three things about its Horn of Africa policy.

Firstly, Ankara is willing to defend its investments and partnerships with high-end military assets, not just rhetoric or training missions.

It also demonstrates that Turkey sees Somalia not as a peripheral engagement but as a strategic node linking the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, a theatre through which it can project influence beyond its immediate neighbourhood.

Finally, it accepts the risks that come with deeper entanglement, including heightened rivalry and militarisation in a region already crowded with external actors.

Somalia, in turn, has shifted from being an example of Turkish aid diplomacy to becoming a key element in Turkey’s changing strategy for the Horn of Africa.

Jonathan Fenton-Harvey is a journalist and researcher who focuses on conflict, geopolitics, and humanitarian issues in the Middle East and North Africa

Follow him on Twitter: @jfentonharvey 

Edited by Charlie Hoyle