Eurasia Press & News
The decisive shift in the Red Sea corridor is not in Yemen but in Somalia – where Turkey has built an offshore chapter of a strategic order the world refuses to face. The Houthis and Iran fill headlines, but the centre of gravity has shifted: a NATO state is projecting power far beyond its borders, and everyone looks away.
Somalia is not a partner of Turkey; it is its proxy – not via militias or banners, but through parallel sovereignty: a foreign-run army, gateways, doctrines and coastline. This is not assistance; it is redesign at the most sensitive choke point of global trade.
Most observers treat Turkey’s footprint in Somalia as development or commerce. The reality is starker. Turkey is building a second strategic geography – offshore, deniable and beyond NATO’s sight – a space to test capabilities NATO cannot monitor, Europe cannot shape and Iran could envy. Somalia is the laboratory and the Gulf of Aden–Red Sea corridor the theatre.
Turkey’s missile-testing project in Somalia is not a footnote. It is the missing tile in a mosaic Ankara has built for over a decade: Russian-fueled nuclear infrastructure in Akkuyu with opaque clauses; Pakistani nuclear and missile expertise embedded through military channels; discreet uranium routes explored via Niger; and now a long, politically shielded African coastline to test delivery systems without the oversight that binds every NATO state – except one.
For the first time in NATO’s history, a member state is constructing a parallel strategic ecosystem. A nuclear-capable Turkey would not shift regional balances – it would detonate the logic that sustains them, collapsing deterrence from the Aegean to the Gulf. The same missile doctrine Erdogan brandished against Athens would apply to every capital exposed to Turkey’s expanding launch corridors, rendering distance, sensors and early-warning grids obsolete. As Marinos Gasiamis noted in Ta Nea, Ankara’s Somali corridor already hosts missile programmes monitored with urgency – confirmation that Turkey’s offshore geometry is documented reality. The new architecture would be authored in Ankara, trialed in Somalia and absorbed by a continent realising the threat is systemic, not local.
But this second geography requires a host. Somalia sold its sovereignty.
Under development banners, Turkey has assumed the role of a surrogate state: a base training thousands of Somali soldiers, an airport and port under long concessions controlling its oxygen lines, a national hospital bearing Erdogan’s name and a Turkish state bank – the first foreign bank in Somalia in half a century – granting Ankara a pipeline into governance. This is leverage, not philanthropy. Somalia receives protection and infrastructure; Turkey receives coastline, concessions, deniability and a launch corridor the alliance does not know how to categorize.
Turkey has used this method before. In Libya it turned an intervention into a semi-permanent presence: a contested maritime deal, airbases at Al-Watiya and Misrata, defence accords reshaping forces and parliamentary mandates keeping Turkish troops until 2026. Somalia is where that pattern leaves the Mediterranean for the Red Sea corridor – the same toolbox of bases, law and dependency, now adapted to missile ranges and a nuclear-adjacent posture.
But proxies never operate in isolation. The Houthis illustrate why. Funded and armed by Iran, they also benefit from Turkey’s oxygen: financial corridors, cover and rhetorical legitimacy Tehran could not obtain in the West. This does not make them pro-Turkish; it makes them effective.
A proxy system works best when sponsors need not coordinate. The Houthis close the strait with missiles; Turkey expands its footprint across from them; Iran gains reach; Turkey gains flexibility; and Europe loses the ability to distinguish cause from consequence.
Israel has demonstrated in Iran what many assumed it would never do, and it assesses the current map with the same clarity. The distance from Israeli airbases to Somalia is nearly identical to Yemen – and only marginally farther than Israel’s operational reach into Iran. Somalia is not beyond Israel’s horizon; it sits within the warning time Israel has acted on before. Ankara – and Mogadishu with it – should not mistake quiet for comfort. Jerusalem’s eyes are open.
But Somalia is not the only Somali coastline. There is another shore – one Erdogan cannot purchase and one that refuses to behave like a client. Somaliland.
If Somalia is a cautionary tale of outsourced sovereignty, Somaliland is the counterexample: a democracy in one of the Horn’s harshest environments. It has held competitive elections, managed peaceful transitions and built institutions resilient enough to outlast governments.
Somaliland is unrecognized de jure but treated de facto as a state by those who prefer truth to diplomatic fiction. Taiwan maintains representative offices. Denmark sustains development channels from Hargeisa. Kenya holds a liaison mission. The UAE invested in Berbera Port, transforming it into a logistics node with strategic effect. And military cooperation – including deployment of systems supplied by a third state under approved end-user terms – underscores a deeper reality: the world behaves as if Somaliland is a state. Only the paperwork is missing.
Between an Iranian proxy in Yemen and a Turkish proxy in Somalia, Somaliland is the last intact coastline on this corridor not yet pulled into someone else’s strategic design.
This is where Israel enters the equation in ways often overlooked. Berbera, unlike Mogadishu, is not a platform for Turkish ambitions but for regional balance. It is there that counter-Houthi maritime awareness has strengthened, and where partners have deployed Israeli-manufactured early-warning systems – acquired by a third state and moved there with explicit Israeli approval. Principle matters more than specifications: Israeli-origin capabilities do not shift theatres without policy behind them. When Israel authorizes third-party basing, it signals something larger than commerce – a strategic map drawn with intent.
Recognizing Somaliland is not theory but timing and strategic clarity. The longer the international system rewards Somalia’s model – ports sold, coastlines leased, statehood outsourced – the more it fuels proxies, dependency and revisionist reach. Backing Somaliland means backing the only model in the Horn where stability comes from institutions, not patrons. The real question is how long the fiction of non-recognition can last before it exacts a price across the Red Sea corridor.
The choice is stark. Either Ankara’s second geography settles into the Red Sea corridor unnoticed, or the Horn’s democratic coastline is strengthened before silence becomes strategy and strategy becomes fact. Israel has aligned its map to this reality. Others must choose whether to face it early or answer it later on Ankara’s terms. The corridor does not wait for hesitation – it rewards those who understand the moment first.
