 |
Israel’s decision to recognize Somaliland on December 26, 2025 did not merely alter a diplomatic equation; it exposed a long-standing misreading of Somaliland itself. For years, regional and extra-regional actors, including Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, operated on a shared presumption: that Somaliland’s insistence on sovereignty was rhetorical rather than strategic, a posture meant to extract concessions rather than redraw alignments. Israel’s recognition shattered that assumption. What followed has been less a coordinated response than a series of improvised signals, none more conspicuous than Turkey’s deployment of F-16 fighter aircraft to Somalia.
The jets have drawn attention. They were meant to. But attention is not leverage, and signaling is not control.
A Miscalculation Years in the Making
The prevailing regional view treated Somaliland as a political problem that could be indefinitely deferred. Ankara invested in Mogadishu. Cairo saw Somalia through the prism of Nile politics and Ethiopian containment. Gulf capitals hedged, calculating that Somaliland’s isolation made it pliable. Even mediation efforts, particularly those involving Turkey, were premised on the belief that time was on Somalia’s side and that Somaliland’s leaders would eventually settle for autonomy rather than independence.
That misreading had consequences. When Ethiopia and Somaliland signed a memorandum of understanding in January 2024 that hinted at a deeper strategic relationship (Red Sea access for Addis Ababa in exchange for potential recognition) the response from Egypt and Turkey was swift and unmistakable. Diplomatic pressure, public saber-rattling, and quiet threats followed. Turkey positioned itself as mediator, but the resulting Ankara Declaration effectively nullified the Ethiopia-Somaliland MoU by promoting direct Ethiopia-Somalia maritime arrangements. The message was clear: some alignments would not be tolerated. The MoU stalled not because it lacked logic, but because it ran headlong into a regional veto enforced through intimidation rather than engagement.
Israel is not Ethiopia.
That distinction is central to understanding why the current moment is different, and why Turkey’s air signaling is fundamentally mismatched to the challenge it faces. Israel is not vulnerable to Nile politics, Red Sea chokepoints managed by hostile neighbors, or African Union consensus-building. It operates on a different plane of risk and calculation. And notably, diplomatic sources now indicate that Israel’s recognition may have fundamentally altered Ethiopia’s own calculus. Rather than merely reinstating the original MoU, Addis Ababa reportedly sees an opportunity to negotiate what some describe as an “MoU 2.0,” a far more advantageous arrangement with a state that now carries the weight of formal recognition.
Turkey in Somalia: A Presence Without a Combat Record
Turkey’s footprint in Mogadishu is substantial, but its character is often misunderstood. Since 2011, Ankara has positioned itself as Somalia’s most visible external patron, blending humanitarian aid, infrastructure projects, port and airport management, and political symbolism into a coherent narrative of partnership. Turkish companies run key facilities. Turkish officers train Somali forces at Camp TURKSOM. Turkish diplomats speak fluently about sovereignty and solidarity.
What Turkey does not have in Somalia is a track record of sustained military action.
Despite years of insecurity, Ankara has avoided overt combat operations. Its military role has been deliberately bounded: training, advising, equipping, and projecting presence without assuming the risks that come with enforcement. Even against al-Shabaab, Turkey has preferred indirect involvement and deniability. The deployment of approximately 500 troops in April 2025, including commandos and drone operators, nearly tripled Turkey’s contingent. But sources familiar with Turkish operations emphasized that these troops were there “solely to protect Turkish assets and to train and advise Somali forces.” They would “only engage al-Shabaab if absolutely necessary and in self-defense.”
This history matters because it frames the F-16 deployment not as escalation along a familiar path, but as a sharp deviation from precedent.
The scale of the logistics effort underscores both the seriousness of Turkey’s intent and the constraints it faces. Open-source flight tracking in late January 2026 has documented an unusually high tempo of Turkish Air Force A400M Atlas transport flights to Mogadishu. These are heavy-lift aircraft capable of carrying disassembled fighter components, munitions, maintenance equipment, and the personnel needed to sustain combat aircraft far from home. Qatar Emiri Air Force C-17A Globemaster heavy transports have also been tracked flying from Qatar to Mogadishu, suggesting the Turkey-Qatar partnership that has long shaped Somalia policy is now extending to military logistics.
The reported deployment of F-16 fighter aircraft (possibly three, though the number remains speculative) represents Turkey’s most forward-leaning military posture in Somalia to date. Yet the very intensity of the logistics effort reveals the underlying problem: sustaining even a small fighter detachment at this distance requires continuous resupply. What arrives by airlift must keep arriving.
Berbera and the Geography of Stakes
Understanding why Turkey’s aerial posture matters less than Ankara hopes requires understanding what Israel actually sees in Somaliland. That begins with Berbera.
The port city sits at the junction of the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, offering access to some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. The UAE has already invested heavily in Berbera’s development, and during Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s visit to Somaliland on January 6, 2026, the first high-level diplomatic visit since recognition, he made a point of including Berbera in his itinerary. In the readout following his trip, Sa’ar confirmed that security cooperation was on the agenda.
Somaliland’s representative to the United States, Bashir Goth, put the matter plainly: “As two independent countries which recognise each other, with diplomatic relations, there is nothing that can stop us from having a security cooperation or a security pact.”
This is what Turkey’s F-16s are meant to complicate. But geography imposes hard limits on what aerial signals can achieve.
Range, Endurance, and the Limits of Reach
From Mogadishu to Hargeisa, the distance is roughly 840 to 850 kilometers one way. On paper, that is within the reach of an F-16. In practice, it pushes the aircraft toward the edge of its unrefueled combat envelope. Transit alone consumes most of the available fuel margin, leaving little room for loiter, interception, or repeated presence.
Even under optimal conditions (external fuel tanks, light loadouts, high-altitude cruise) the operational reality is unforgiving. A jet that must immediately plan its return is not enforcing airspace. It is transiting it.
Berbera lies even farther, approximately 950 kilometers from Mogadishu. Any sustained presence over Somaliland’s strategic infrastructure would require tanker support that Turkey does not appear to have positioned in theater. Airpower coerces not through appearance, but through persistence. On that measure, aircraft operating at range offer symbolism, not control.
The airlift pattern visible in open-source tracking tells its own story. A400M transports and C-17 heavy lifters do not surge to this tempo to deliver a self-sustaining capability. They fly this frequently because the capability is not self-sustaining. Every heavy transport that lands in Mogadishu is an admission that what Turkey has positioned there cannot persist without an umbilical to Anatolia and the Gulf.
A small detachment, however many aircraft it comprises, is enough to generate sorties for a demonstration. It is not enough to maintain persistent presence, absorb maintenance downtime, or rotate crews through sustained operations. The logistics tail wagging behind this deployment is disproportionate to the combat power it delivers.
The Signaling Gap
Talk of no-fly zones has accompanied the deployment, but the concept collapses under scrutiny. No-fly zones are among the most resource-intensive military undertakings imaginable. They require continuous patrols, overlapping rotations, tanker support, early warning, intelligence coverage, legal authorization, and the willingness to escalate when challenged.
A limited deployment cannot provide this. It cannot sustain presence. It cannot rotate. It cannot absorb attrition, weather, or mechanical failure. At best, it can create a brief intercept window. At worst, it exposes assets without strategic depth.
The difference matters. A no-fly zone is a system. What Turkey has deployed is a punctuation mark.
The Sa’ar Visit: A Test Case in Risk Calculation
Consider the scenario that has already occurred: an Israeli foreign minister traveling to Hargeisa.
When Sa’ar landed in the Somaliland capital on January 6, video footage circulated on social media purporting to show fighter jets flying over the city during his visit, though the aircraft’s origin remained unclear. What is clear is that the visit proceeded without incident. Sa’ar met President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi at the presidential palace, the two signed agreements, and Abdullahi accepted Prime Minister Netanyahu’s invitation for an official visit to Israel.
From Israel’s perspective, the presence of Turkish F-16s in Mogadishu did not fundamentally alter the threat environment. Israeli planners assess risk through detection timelines, escalation thresholds, adversary sustainment, and response options, not aircraft counts alone. A Turkish jet operating at the edge of its range, with no depth behind it, is a known quantity. It is visible early, tracked continuously, and politically exposed the moment it deviates from routine behavior.
More importantly, interference with a diplomatic flight carrying a sitting Israeli foreign minister would collapse deniability instantly. It would transform symbolic signaling into direct confrontation with a state that has built its security doctrine around escalation dominance. Ankara would be assuming costs far out of proportion to any plausible gain.
Sa’ar himself seemed aware of this dynamic. In his post-visit statement, he noted: “Only Israel will decide whom it recognises and with whom it maintains diplomatic relations.”
Regional analysts have noted the mismatch in stark terms. Rashid Abdi, a prominent Horn of Africa security analyst, observed that “it is not clear what Turkey’s rapid deployment of lethal air assets in Somalia means.” But the implications of miscalculation are clear enough: “If Turkey opts to militarily challenge Israel’s engagement with Somaliland, that could tip scale, trigger direct conflict.” His assessment of the balance was blunt. Turkey “ought to be careful not to challenge the world’s best second air force in a new air war.”
The warning captures something the deployment’s optics obscure. Turkey has positioned aircraft. It has not positioned itself for a confrontation it could win.
The Houthi Dimension
There is another actor watching Somaliland’s emergence onto the diplomatic stage: Yemen’s Houthis. Following Israel’s recognition, Houthi leader Abdel-Malik al-Houthi described the move as a “hostile stance” and warned that any Israeli presence in Somaliland would be treated as a military target.
This threat is not empty posturing. The Houthis have launched missiles and drones at Israel since October 2023, and Somaliland’s position across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen places it squarely within the geography of Red Sea tensions. For Israel, this is precisely why Somaliland matters: not as a provocation, but as part of a broader architecture for managing threats to maritime traffic and regional stability.
For Turkey, the Houthi factor complicates rather than simplifies. Ankara’s Somalia posture is premised on partnership with Mogadishu and regional legitimacy. Aligning even implicitly with Houthi threats against Israeli interests would carry costs Turkey has shown no willingness to bear.
Addressing the Disinformation
Any serious analysis must also contend with the allegations that have surrounded Israel’s recognition. Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud claimed that Israel’s decision was conditioned on three demands: the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza in Somaliland, the establishment of Israeli military bases, and Somaliland’s accession to the Abraham Accords.
Somaliland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected these claims categorically: “The Government of the Republic of Somaliland firmly rejects false claims alleging the resettlement of Palestinians or the establishment of military bases in Somaliland.”
The Palestinian resettlement allegation deserves particular scrutiny. Forced population transfer is a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute. No such proposal exists within any legitimate diplomatic framework, and the claim circulated for months before Israel’s recognition, suggesting its purpose was preemptive disinformation rather than response to actual events.
That these allegations gained traction speaks to the information environment surrounding Somaliland’s breakthrough. But they do not withstand factual examination.
Airspace Shortcuts and Strategic Dead Ends
Some have suggested that Turkish aircraft could mitigate range constraints by transiting Ethiopian airspace. In purely geometric terms, such routing could marginally improve fuel margins. Politically and strategically, it changes little. Military overflight requires explicit permission. Ethiopia has little incentive to entangle itself in coercive air signaling aimed at Somaliland, particularly after its own experience with external pressure over the January 2024 MoU, and particularly now, when its own recognition of Somaliland may be under internal deliberation.
Even if permission were granted, routing efficiency does not create persistence. It does not solve the sustainment problem. Reach is not control.
The NATO Assumption
Underlying much of the speculation is an assumption that Turkey’s NATO membership provides a safety net. It does not. NATO offers no automatic backing for unilateral operations unrelated to collective defense. There is no appetite within the alliance to underwrite coercive air activity in the Horn of Africa, especially when it risks entanglement with Israel and key Gulf partners.
Ankara knows this. That knowledge constrains it more than public statements ever will.
What This Moment Actually Reveals
The reaction to Israel’s recognition of Somaliland has laid bare a deeper reality: several regional actors mistook Somaliland’s patience for pliability. When that assumption collapsed, the response defaulted to signaling. Jets, statements, mediation efforts heavy on pressure and light on incentives.
Israel’s move is different precisely because it does not hinge on regional approval. Somaliland diplomat Ismail Shirwac captured the shift when he described Sa’ar’s visit as “a defining moment in the deepening relations between two democratic nations operating in a strategically critical region.” He characterized the diplomatic partnership as “not only significant, it is irreversible.”
Irreversibility is exactly what Turkey’s deployment cannot address. Airpower can delay. It can complicate. It can raise costs at the margins. What it cannot do is reverse a diplomatic fact that both parties have committed to institutionalizing.
The jets arrived. They announced Turkish displeasure. They reassured Mogadishu. They demonstrated relevance.
What they did not do is alter outcomes.
Airpower without endurance does not coerce. It announces, and then it leaves.
