Somalia’s defense minister, ambassador attend Somali officers’ graduation ceremony in Türkiye

On Turkey’s Victory Day, new Somali officers step forward in Ankara

Under a late-summer sky in Ankara, the brass of military bands mingled with the steady tap of parade boots and the low murmur of families craning for a better view. On a day when Turkey commemorates its hard-won independence, a new class of officers—including a cohort from Somalia—crossed the stage at the National Defence University’s War College to collect their diplomas.

Somali Defence Minister Ahmed Moallim Fiqi and Somalia’s ambassador to Turkey, Fathudin Ali Mohamed Ospite, made the trip to witness it. They handed out certificates and medals, shook hands, and paused for photographs that will be thumbed through years from now in living rooms from Ankara to Mogadishu. Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, watched on—his presence a reminder that this was more than a routine graduation.

These Somali officers have completed one of the region’s more demanding courses in staff and command training. They will return to a homeland still contending with insurgency, political strains, and the long, complicated work of rebuilding national institutions after decades of conflict. Their challenge is not only to lead soldiers in the field, but to weave together doctrine, logistics, and strategy into an army that can hold ground and hold trust.

A partnership forged in training grounds

Turkey and Somalia’s defence ties are not new. Turkish aid ships first arrived in Mogadishu over a decade ago, during a devastating famine. Since then, Ankara has built a sprawling military training base in the Somali capital and trained thousands of Somali troops—part of a broad bet on state-building through security assistance. The War College, where officers from multiple countries study, is the finishing school for those expected to plan campaigns and manage complex operations, not just execute them.

At the ceremony, Ambassador Ospite noted that the Somali contingent had performed among the strongest of the foreign cohorts. “The Somali army officers and other international trainees received advanced military training,” he said. “The Somali government thanks our Turkish brothers for their support in rebuilding our armed forces.”

Minister Fiqi, in turn, praised the perseverance of the graduates who navigated a demanding curriculum in a foreign language and culture. He draped medals and posed for photos that, beyond ceremony, symbolize the growing institutional bonds between the two countries’ armed forces.

From classrooms to frontline realities

What does a War College actually teach that matters to Somalia right now? In a word: institutions. Graduates emerge versed in staff work, planning, air-land-sea coordination, and the unglamorous calculus of logistics that keeps an army alive—fuel, spare parts, medevac. In Somalia, where local commanders often must improvise, that kind of standardized planning is a force multiplier.

Yet the test will come far from Ankara’s lecture halls. The Somali National Army is fighting a stubborn insurgency. It operates alongside a patchwork of regional forces and allied troops, with different partners training units on different timetables and doctrines. The United States, the European Union, the United Arab Emirates and others have trained contingents. Thousands of Somali troops also returned from training in Eritrea in recent years. That mix can be a strength—bringing equipment and skills from diverse sources—but it can also create gaps between units.

Graduates carrying War College binders back to Mogadishu may soon be asked to knit those disparate parts together: to standardize communications, sync operations with intelligence, and improve the chain of command. It’s the unheralded work of building a national army that can outlast any single operation.

Regional ripples and maritime stakes

The timing of this class’s graduation adds weight. The ceremony coincided with Turkey’s Victory Day, marking the decisive battles of August 1922 that closed one chapter of Anatolia’s long wars and helped lead to the founding of the Republic a year later. Victory Day is part memory, part message: sovereignty is defended by capable institutions and a trained officer corps.

Somalia, too, is trying to write a new chapter. Beyond the fight against al-Shabaab, the country is reshaping its maritime security. With one of Africa’s longest coastlines, Somalia sits along sea lanes that carry everything from Gulf oil to grain bound for the Horn of Africa. In recent years, maritime risks—from illegal fishing to piracy flare-ups and wider Red Sea tensions—have pushed Mogadishu and Ankara to deepen cooperation at sea as well as on land.

Turkey’s broader strategy—investing in training and infrastructure rather than short, sharp interventions—has found traction in parts of Africa. It mirrors a wider global trend: mid-sized powers using education, equipment, and construction to build influence alongside security partnerships. For Somalia, the attraction is practical. Training abroad offers breathing space and the chance to cultivate a cadre of officers who can adapt global best practices to local realities.

The human stakes behind the uniforms

Diplomas and medals make for fine photographs. The harder story will play out in patrol bases, ports, and district headquarters back home. Somali officers must balance the demands of fighting an agile insurgency with the patience required to rebuild a national chain of command. They will face the daily grind of maintaining vehicles in punishing terrain, rationing fuel during lean weeks, and coaxing technology to work where bandwidth is thin and power unreliable.

They will also carry a different burden: convincing communities to trust the state. Troops who treat civilians with respect, pay their bills, and keep a predictable presence are more likely to secure towns than units that arrive as strangers and leave as ghosts. That human terrain is as important as any firing range.

On the parade ground in Ankara, such worries feel far away. Still, even amid celebration, many of the new officers know what awaits. Victory, in their case, is measured not in one decisive battle but in the steadier metrics of stability: markets that stay open, roads safe at dusk, families who choose to stay rather than flee.

What comes next

Somalia’s leaders often describe this period as a hinge—one that could swing toward durable institutions or back toward fragmentation. The return of a fresh cohort of staff-trained officers will not, by itself, decide that. But it is a piece of the puzzle that matters, especially if the government can integrate these graduates into roles where they can shape doctrine, mentor junior commanders, and improve coordination with allies.

For Turkey, these graduations are both a point of pride and a demonstration of soft power with steel in it. For Somalia, they are an investment in the long game: training not just fighters, but planners and managers who can turn hard-won ground into lasting security.

On Victory Day, Turkish schoolchildren learn that a nation’s future is built as much in classrooms as on battlefields. In Ankara this week, that lesson extended to a group of Somali officers stepping off the stage and into a high-stakes assignment: to turn education into endurance, and endurance into peace.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.