Mapping the Turkish Military’s Expanding Global Footprint

Not since the days of the Ottoman Empire has the Turkish military had such an extensive footprint. In addition to its 50-year military presence in northern Cyprus, Turkey maintains forces in four countries in the Middle East and has said it plans to increase operations in Syria and Iraq. It also has troops in Azerbaijan and Somalia, whose maritime security it pledged to improve in an agreement struck earlier this year. In addition, the Turkish navy patrols the Mediterranean and Aegean seas, where the country has laid claim to energy and territorial interests. Here’s a look at where Turkey, under its ambitious president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is flexing its muscles, and why.

Iraq
Turkey’s military presence in Iraq is connected to its concerns about Kurdish separatism. Turkey frequently sends warplanes into northern Iraq to target hideouts of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has battled for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey. Lately, Turkey has employed a so-called inkblot military strategy to seize control of the rugged border area, creating more than 100 army outposts inside Iraq. That’s in addition to several bases in an area where it first assumed a peacekeeping mission in the 1990s designed to enforce a US- and UK-mediated cease-fire between rival Kurdish parties. Turkey’s continued presence is intended to check both the activities of the PKK and the independence aspirations of Iraq’s Kurds. After dozens of Turkish soldiers in Iraq were killed in attacks in December and January that Turkey blamed on the PKK, Erdogan vowed that the military would step up its operations against both that group and its offshoot, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, in Syria. Turkey and Iraq are engaged in talks to secure their joint border.

Syria
Turkey’s military intervention in Syria is one of its largest foreign operations since the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I. Erdogan first sent troops there in 2016 to fight both Islamic State, the violent movement that at one time controlled a chunk of territory in Iraq and Syria as big as Iceland, and the YPG. Turkish troops also captured towns in northern Syria in an effort to establish a buffer zone to encourage some of the more than 3.6 million Syrians who have fled to Turkey to return home, and to avert a new wave of refugees. The YPG has been a source of tension between Turkey and the US, which has supported the YPG because of its role combating Islamic State. In October, during Turkish airstrikes against the YPG, an American jet shot down a Turkish drone that flew close to US forces in Syria, a rare instance of two NATO allies coming into conflict.

Libya
Turkey maintains military trainers and advisers in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, as two rival administrations in that country remain engaged in political feuds after years of civil war. Erdogan had sent naval and land forces to Libya to back the United Nations-recognized government based in Tripoli against the forces of military commander Khalifa Haftar, who has been supported by Russian mercenaries, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey sought to capitalize on its influence over the Tripoli-based government to secure new energy resources after winning Libyan backing for a contentious maritime deal reinforcing Turkey’s claim to rights in the eastern Mediterranean, where it has territorial disputes with Greece. Turkey also aims to salvage business contracts worth billions of dollars that have been thrown into limbo by the protracted conflict in Libya since late dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi was toppled in 2011.

Qatar
Turkey has steadily built up a base in Qatar since siding in 2017 with the gas-rich Gulf state in its spat with a regional alliance led by Saudi Arabia. Turkey and Qatar are wedded by their support for the Muslim Brotherhood, a political movement that has troubled the Saudis and most other Gulf monarchies that see it as a threat to their absolute rule, especially since the Arab Spring revolts at the start of the 2010s. Turkey and Qatar deepened their security ties with an agreement that went into force in 2022. It allows Qatar to temporarily deploy its warplanes in Turkey for joint drills and Turkey to use Qatari cargo planes to carry Turkish personnel and/or ammunition for missions at home or abroad.

Somalia
In 2017, Turkey opened its largest overseas military base in Mogadishu, where hundreds of Turkish troops are training Somali soldiers under a broader Turkish plan to help rebuild a country devastated by decades of clan warfare and an insurgency by the Islamist group al-Shabaab. Turkey has been increasing its foothold in the Horn of Africa nation since Erdogan visited in 2011, helping to revive such services as education and health as well as security. In March, Turkey and Somalia signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in oil and natural gas exploration off the Somali coast, after the two states agreed to increase economic ties and defense cooperation aimed at improving Somalia’s naval capabilities earlier in 2024.

Azerbaijan
Turkey maintains military trainers and advisers in Azerbaijan and has access to an air base there as part of a collective defense pact that went into force in 2022. Armed with Turkish-supplied drones, Azerbaijan launched a lightening offensive in September to restore full control over Nagorno-Karabakh, an area controlled by Armenians since the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago. Less than a week later, Erdogan traveled to Naxcivan, a part of Azerbaijan that’s cut off from the rest of the country. The trip was part of an effort to capitalize on the regional turbulence by advancing plans for a trade route through the Caucasus. Azerbaijan defeated its neighbor Armenia in a 2020 war with the help of armed drones made in Turkey, which has also been supplying its ally missiles and electronic warfare devices.

Cyprus
The Turkish military maintains about 40,000 troops in Cyprus. The island is split along ethnic lines, with Turkish Cypriots living in a self-proclaimed state in the north and Greek Cypriots in the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus in the south. Turkish troops have been present in the north since 1974, following a coup attempt in which a military junta in Athens sought to unite Cyprus with Greece. Turkey does not recognize the Republic of Cyprus, which is a member of the European Union, while the breakaway entity in the north is recognized only by Turkey. It claims rights to any energy resources off its coast, which led to a face off between the Turkish and Greek navies in 2020. In September, Turkey and Greece agreed to intensify talks aimed at resolving longstanding regional conflicts, including Cyprus.

Elsewhere
With its force of 425,000 soldiers, Turkey has the second-largest military in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in terms of personnel. It continues to participate in a NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo and another that is now led by the EU in Bosnia-Herzegovina with a particular interest in helping to protect ethnic Turkish communities there. Turkish military trainers are present in Gambia and Mali. In a controversial move, Turkey attempted but failed to establish military training centers in Sudan during the rule of then-president Omar al-Bashir, who is on the International Criminal Court’s wanted list for war crimes in the Darfur region in western Sudan.

Source » msn.com