For Israeli military planners, the threat map of the Red Sea has long been defined by fixed coordinates: Iran to the east, Yemen’s Houthis to the south, and familiar adversaries on the northern borders.
However, a new and complex anxiety is creeping into the strategic debates in Tel Aviv, shifting the focus to a NATO member state operating far beyond its traditional sphere.
Turkey’s deepening integration with Somalia is no longer viewed merely as economic outreach; Israeli analysts increasingly categorize it as the construction of a “second strategic geography”—a potentially hostile foothold at the gateway to the Red Sea.
Prominent Israeli voices, such as analyst Shay Gal writing in Israel Hayom, warn that while the world remains fixated on the Houthis, Ankara is quietly assembling an offshore ecosystem of power. This infrastructure reportedly includes missile testing capabilities, military training, and sovereign-level influence.
This narrative suggests that Turkey is effectively encircling Israel from the Horn of Africa, creating capabilities that bypass NATO oversight and threaten the region’s delicate balance.
Yet, a closer examination reveals that this alarmist perspective may be less about an existential Turkish threat and more about a geopolitical sleight of hand—one designed to justify a counter-strategy involving the UAE, Israel, and the diplomatic recognition of Somaliland.
Strategic anxiety
The core of Tel Aviv’s concern lies in the rapid evolution of Turkish-Somali relations, which have graduated from humanitarian aid to high-level defense cooperation.
In 2024, Turkey and Somalia signed a comprehensive defense and economic cooperation framework, followed by agreements regarding hydrocarbon exploration and the establishment of a spaceport and missile test range.
For analysts like Gal, this represents not a partnership but a “redesign.” They argue that Turkey has effectively acquired a proxy state, gaining a long, unmonitored coastline to test ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles—activities that are geographically impossible within the crowded airspace of the Mediterranean or Black Sea.
The fear is both technical and political. Turkey’s domestic missile program, which includes the Tayfun ballistic missile, faces geographical constraints at home. A launch site in Somalia, facing the open Indian Ocean, offers the perfect azimuth for long-range testing.
To the suspicious observer in Tel Aviv, this looks like the missing piece of a strategic puzzle: a way for a regionally assertive Turkey to perfect delivery systems that could theoretically reach across the region, all while sheltered by Somali sovereignty.
The current diplomatic freeze between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan amplifies this anxiety, leading some to interpret every Turkish move in the Horn of Africa through a lens of direct confrontation.
Mosaic of encirclement
Critics construct this threat perception by connecting disparate dots into what they term a “mosaic” of encirclement. The narrative threads together Turkey’s Russian-built Akkuyu nuclear plant, its military ties with nuclear-armed Pakistan, and its outreach to uranium-rich Niger, culminating in the Somali coast.
In this view, Somalia becomes the laboratory for a “nuclear-adjacent” posture, where Ankara can act without the restraints that bind other NATO members.
The argument posits that a nuclear-capable or long-range missile-armed Turkey would “detonate the logic” of regional deterrence, rendering Israeli early-warning systems and strategic depth obsolete.
However, this “mosaic” relies heavily on worst-case assumptions and speculative linking.
It presumes that Turkey, a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) under strict NATO scrutiny, is actively pursuing a rogue nuclear doctrine. It also assumes that Somalia, a sovereign nation battling a brutal insurgency, is merely a passive vessel for Turkish ambition.
By framing the Somali-Turkish alliance solely as an anti-Israeli “power play,” these analysts strip the situation of its local context, ignoring the desperate reality of a Somali state fighting for survival and the vacuum left by Western powers that Turkey stepped in to fill.
Physics over politics
To debunk the “proxy threat” narrative, one must look at the practical realities of rocketry and geography.
The establishment of a launch site in Somalia is driven primarily by physics, not politics. Launching satellites or testing long-range systems requires a trajectory over open water and, ideally, proximity to the equator to maximize orbital payload efficiency.
Turkey’s Anatolian geography is boxed in by neighbors; Somalia offers the Indian Ocean. While this certainly enhances Turkey’s independent military-industrial capabilities, equating a test range with an active offensive missile base targeting Israel requires a leap of strategic logic.
Furthermore, characterizing Turkey’s presence as “opaque” contradicts the public nature of these agreements. The Somali parliament ratified the defense pacts, and the governments announced them openly.
The “Russian-fueled” nuclear fears regarding Akkuyu overlook that the plant is owned and operated by Rosatom under IAEA safeguards—a commercial model used elsewhere, not a covert weapons program.
By catastrophizing standard state-level defense cooperation, the narrative distracts from the actual utility of the base: providing the Somali government with the hard power necessary to reclaim its territory from Al-Shabab terrorists.
A desperate alliance
Viewing the relationship through Somali eyes reveals a starkly different picture than the “sold sovereignty” accusation.
When Erdogan first visited Mogadishu in 2011, the capital was a famine-struck war zone abandoned by most of the international community. Turkey did not arrive with missiles; it arrived with bread, bulldozers, and doctors.
The infrastructure seen today—the airport, the port, the Camp TURKSOM military academy, and the Recep Tayyip Erdogan Hospital—is a lifeline for a recovering nation, not just a series of military outposts.
Somalia is not a puppet but a state exercising agency in a rough neighborhood. Facing an existential threat from Al-Shabab and recent territorial encroachments by Ethiopia (via the Somaliland MoU), Mogadishu turned to the one partner that offered tangible security guarantees.
The Turkish navy’s mandate to protect Somali waters is less about threatening Israel and more about stopping illegal fishing, toxic dumping, and piracy—issues that have plagued Somalia for decades.
The presence of Turkish drones and trained commandos has been the decisive factor in keeping the fragile federal government from collapsing, a stability that benefits the entire region, including the Red Sea trade corridor.
The Emirati counterweight
Perhaps the most critical omission in the anti-Turkey narrative is the role of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and its alignment with Israel.
While analysts decry Turkey’s “second geography” in Somalia, they often remain silent on the UAE’s parallel “empire of ports” in Somaliland, Puntland, and Yemen’s Socotra Island.
The UAE has aggressively established military and commercial logistics nodes throughout the Horn, often bypassing the federal government in Mogadishu to deal directly with breakaway or semi-autonomous regions.
This is where the geopolitical picture becomes clearer. The demonization of the Turkey-Somalia alliance serves a specific tactical purpose: it creates a pretext for the “containment” of Mogadishu and validates the recognition of Somaliland.
Somaliland, which declared independence in 1991, hosts a major port managed by DP World (a Dubai giant) and has offered the US and others access to the strategic Berbera port and airfield.
By painting federal Somalia as a captured “Turkish proxy,” proponents of Somaliland recognition can argue that the breakaway region is the only “safe,” democratic, and pro-Western option left on the coast.
Politics of recognition
This narrative aligns perfectly with the post-Abraham Accords reality, where Israel and the UAE share a strategic outlook.
Israeli-made early warning systems and counter-Houthi intelligence sharing are reportedly active in the UAE’s sphere of influence in the Horn. If Somalia is the “Turkish zone,” then Somaliland region is being cultivated as the “UAE-Israel zone.”
The alarm raised by Gal and others regarding Turkey effectively serves as an information operation to soften Western reluctance to recognize Somaliland. It presents a binary choice: support the “Turkish-Iranian” axis in Mogadishu, or support the “Democratic-Western” axis in Hargeisa.
This framing is convenient but dangerous. It glosses over the fact that the UAE’s support for fragmentation in the Horn can be just as destabilizing as any Turkish centralization.
The Atlantic Council and other observers have noted that bypassing Mogadishu undermines the very state-building efforts the West claims to support.
The true “encirclement” might not be Turkey surrounding Israel, but rather the UAE and its allies enveloping the Somali coast, cutting off Mogadishu’s access to its own strategic value to force political concessions.
The stability calculation
Ultimately, the Red Sea corridor does not need another zero-sum proxy war.
The attempt to frame Turkey’s developmental and military assistance to Somalia as an existential threat to Israel is a distortion that risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. It encourages a hostile posture toward Mogadishu, driving Somalia further into the arms of Ankara or other rivals.
A stable Somalia, secured by Turkish-trained troops and capable of policing its own waters, offers a better buffer against chaos than a fragmented coast of warring statelets.
The reality is that both Turkey and the UAE are projecting power in the Horn of Africa to secure their own economic and security interests.
Israel’s security establishment is right to monitor capabilities, but it should be wary of political narratives that urge it to pick a side in a Somali civil dispute.
The “quiet power play” is indeed happening, but it is a game with two players. Recognizing the UAE-Israel maneuver to leverage Somaliland against the Turkey-Somalia bloc is essential to understanding the full scope of the region’s high-stakes poker game.
Peace in the Red Sea depends on integration and state stability, not on manufacturing boogeymen to justify the partition of the Horn.
