Former Foreign Minister’s rare public reckoning exposes the high cost of fixating on Mogadishu while Hargeisa’s strategic gravity redefines regional power dynamics.
By Goth Mohamed Goth
In a moment of rare diplomatic introspection, former Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has candidly conceded that Ankara committed an egregious strategic blunder by funneling its political capital, military resources, and economic influence into Somalia while systematically sidelining Somaliland—a self-governing nation whose geopolitical stock has skyrocketed in an increasingly contested maritime arena.
Çavuşoğlu’s retrospective critique zeroes in on what he described as a fundamental failure of strategic foresight: the inability to parse the Horn of Africa’s shifting tectonic plates and recognize that Somaliland’s 850-kilometer coastline along the Gulf of Aden—positioned mere nautical miles from the Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint—rendered it a far more consequential partner than Mogadishu’s fragile federal administration.
The former minister’s acknowledgment, reportedly shared in closed diplomatic circles, underscores a growing recognition within Ankara that its decade-long Somalia-centric policy has yielded diminishing strategic returns, while Somaliland—characterized by relative political stability, functioning democratic institutions, and an increasingly assertive international posture—remained an afterthought in Turkish foreign policy calculations.
A Decade of Investment, A Paucity of Returns
Turkey’s engagement with Somalia has been among its most ambitious overseas undertakings. Since 2011, Ankara has established its largest foreign military training facility in Mogadishu, channeled hundreds of millions of dollars in development aid through TİKA, rebuilt critical infrastructure, and secured lucrative maritime security agreements. President Erdoğan’s personal diplomacy positioned Turkey as Mogadishu’s foremost patron, with Ankara viewing its Somali venture as a launchpad for broader influence across the Red Sea basin and the Indian Ocean.
Yet Çavuşoğlu’s reported remarks expose a harsh reality: these substantial investments have not translated into the strategic depth Ankara anticipated. Somalia remains deeply fractured, grappling with Al-Shabaab’s persistent insurgency, clan-based fragmentation, and a federal government that exercises tenuous control beyond Mogadishu’s perimeters. The anticipated returns—whether in terms of naval access, intelligence cooperation, or regional diplomatic leverage—have remained elusive.
Meanwhile, Somaliland’s Berbera Port has emerged as a crown jewel of regional infrastructure, with Dubai’s DP World operating a modernized multi-purpose facility that directly challenges Djibouti’s maritime monopoly. The Ethiopia-Somaliland Memorandum of Understanding, granting Addis Ababa naval access in exchange for potential recognition, further illustrates Hargeisa’s growing magnetism—a development Ankara reportedly failed to anticipate or counter.
The Geography Ankara Overlooked
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which nearly 10% of global seaborne trade—including critical energy shipments destined for European and Asian markets—transits annually, has emerged as the central theater of great-power competition. Somaliland’s coastline commands a strategic vantage point over this corridor, offering prospective partners unparalleled opportunities for maritime surveillance, naval basing, and trade route protection.
What Ankara evidently dismissed as a peripheral territorial dispute has crystallized into a high-stakes geopolitical asset. Somaliland’s stability—in stark contrast to Somalia’s protracted volatility—has positioned it as an attractive partner for powers seeking reliable footholds in a region defined by turbulence. Its democratic pedigree, including regularly scheduled elections and peaceful transfers of power, further distinguishes Hargeisa from Mogadishu’s governance struggles.
Çavuşoğlu’s critique implicitly acknowledges that Turkey’s strategic calculus failed to account for these differentiating factors. By anchoring its regional strategy to Somalia’s precarious federal project, Ankara arguably forfeited the opportunity to cultivate a more predictable, capable, and geographically advantageous partner in Somaliland—a miscalculation with lasting implications for Turkey’s Red Sea ambitions.
Israel’s Recognition: A Diplomatic Earthquake
The geopolitical calculus surrounding Somaliland has undergone a seismic transformation following Israel’s full diplomatic recognition of the Republic—a watershed development that has irrevocably altered Hargeisa’s international standing.
Israel’s decision, driven by strategic intelligence imperatives and maritime security interests, has effectively shattered the diplomatic quarantine that long constrained Somaliland’s aspirations. A nuclear-armed state with formidable technological and intelligence capabilities has now validated Hargeisa’s strategic value in the most tangible terms possible.
This recognition serves as a powerful multiplier for Somaliland’s international position. It creates a compelling precedent that other nations—particularly those recalibrating their Horn of Africa strategies in response to intensifying competition—may find increasingly difficult to disregard. For Turkey, Israel’s move represents a particularly bitter irony: while Ankara fixated on Mogadishu, Jerusalem quietly positioned itself in a territory whose importance Ankara now belatedly acknowledges.
A Reckoning with Consequences
Çavuşoğlu’s reported candor arrives at a pivotal moment, reflecting a broader strategic reassessment sweeping through foreign policy establishments that previously dismissed Somaliland’s significance. His remarks implicitly recognize that Turkey’s Somalia-centric approach was not merely suboptimal—it was fundamentally misdirected.
The consequences of this miscalculation extend beyond diplomatic embarrassment. Turkey’s ambitions of establishing a permanent naval presence in the Horn of Africa, securing intelligence-sharing arrangements, and expanding its commercial footprint along key maritime arteries have all been constrained by its over-reliance on Somalia’s unstable framework. Meanwhile, rival powers—including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, China, and now Israel—have moved decisively to cultivate relationships with Somaliland, capitalizing on the very opportunities Ankara overlooked.
For nations that once treated Somaliland’s political aspirations as subordinate to Somalia’s territorial claims, the emerging reality demands urgent recalibration. Governments that sidelined Hargeisa now confront the sobering prospect that they have forfeited influence in one of the world’s most strategically consequential regions.
The New Geopolitical Imperative
For Somaliland, the trajectory is increasingly unambiguous: the entity that some once dismissed as an irredentist curiosity has become an indispensable actor in the Horn of Africa’s geopolitical landscape. Its strategic location, democratic governance, and expanding portfolio of international partnerships position it as a linchpin of regional security and economic integration.
Çavuşoğlu’s acknowledgment, whether it signals an impending shift in Turkish policy or merely reflects retrospective frustration, nonetheless encapsulates a broader truth: the era of disregarding Somaliland has passed. The question that now confronts Ankara—and indeed all nations with interests in the Red Sea basin—is not whether engagement with Somaliland merits consideration, but whether they have already arrived too late to secure the partnerships that could define the region’s future.
As competition for influence intensifies across the Horn of Africa, Somaliland’s strategic assets ensure that it will remain at the epicenter of diplomatic maneuvering, maritime security architectures, and great-power rivalry. The nations that recognize this reality—and act upon it with the urgency it demands—will shape the next chapter of regional order. Those that repeat Ankara’s miscalculation risk consigning themselves to irrelevance in one of the twenty-first century’s most consequential theaters.
