\u201cTurkey\u2019s presence is very visible. It came to Somalia through humanitarian grounds with the tagline \u2018Turkish Airlines Help Somalia\u2019. Now, Turkish Airlines is the only airline to Mogadishu. They are visible on ground and air,\u201d Wangechi said.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Wangechi, who teaches at USIU-Africa, noted that already, Turkey is training 10,000 soldiers. She said training of Somalia commandos would be an opportunity Kenya can take advantage of.<\/p>\n
Why is Turkey succeeding where Kenya isn’t?<\/p>\n
Wangechi says Turkey\u2019s use of soft strategy and informal dialogues to address security issues plays to its advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cOpening companies in Somalia, concept of first-mover advantage, concept of creating jobs and education opportunities by building training schools have helped Turkey\u2019s entry in Somalia,” she said<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no interference with Somalia\u2019s politics of the day. And Turkey is winning the hearts of the locals by showing they don\u2019t have direct influence on who is the leader. Whoever comes in Turkey will work with. That is how then they are getting the buy-in from the locals. It is giving military and political support but that doesn\u2019t mean it is interfering,\u201d Wangechi noted.<\/p>\n
Dr Ahmed Hashi, Horn of Africa analyst, said with the current election stalemate, Somalia is almost getting to a meltdown, and risks going back to civil war.<\/p>\n
He noted that elections will be key to Somalia\u2019s stability and thus important for regional organisations such as IGAD to ensure elections are conducted.<\/p>\n
While Turkey has expressed concerns over the election stalemate, Kenya remains mum despite the immediate consequences it would suffer in case of an instable Somalia.<\/p>\n
Dr Mumo Nzau said the Gulf States are important to Somalia and Kenya because they can influence how cooperation or conflicts take place as well as competition in the region.<\/p>\n
KENYA-TURKEY TIES<\/strong><\/p>\nTrade, humanitarian and development\/ infrastructure partnerships have been the key elements of Turkey\u2019s cooperation with Kenya.<\/p>\n
For instance, Turkish Coordination and Cooperation Agency \u2014 T\u0130KA Nairobi Office \u2014 has been operating in Kenya since 2012.<\/p>\n
As of 2018, the Turkish embassy says, it had implemented 200 projects in Kenya particularly in the fields of health, food, agriculture, livestock and education.<\/p>\n
Turkey is also facilitating Kenyan experts’ participation in\u00a0 its capacity development programmes in security, agriculture, education and health.<\/p>\n
As is happening with Somalia, between 2017 to 2019, 60 Kenyan students were funded by the T\u00fcrkiye Scholarships Programme to study in Turkish universities.<\/p>\n
Dr Patrick Maluki of the University of Nairobi said one of the ways Kenya can take advantage of Turkey\u2019s political expansion in terms of influence is to be the launching path in Africa.<\/p>\n
That will depend on how efficient and effective Kenya is by having policies that are attractive to Turkey and other development partners she may come alongside with.<\/p>\n
Michael Macharia of Pioneer University suggested that in developing such a policy, Kenya needs to identify key areas of mutual interests and \u201cget a template to guide the interests.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is need to provide incentives to the private sector because they help build relations to encourage foreign direct investments,\u201d Macharia said.<\/p>\n
Among the ways to enhance such ties is to encourage free movement of persons, reduction of tariffs, partnership in security and the war on terrorism and trade facilitation.<\/p>\n
Source: The Star<\/p>\n
Hadalsame Media<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Nairobi) 07 March 2021 – In recent years, Turkey has been a leading development partner in Africa, which is seen as a key area for economic opportunities by Ankara. \u2022 Given Kenya and Turkey are now key players in Horn of Africa stability, analysts say Nairobi needs to leverage on Ankara\u2019s position regionally for peace […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hadalsame.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/b-47.jpg?fit=512%2C384&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Xl2P-fFV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hadalsame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hadalsame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hadalsame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hadalsame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hadalsame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60259"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hadalsame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60262,"href":"https:\/\/www.hadalsame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60259\/revisions\/60262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hadalsame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hadalsame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hadalsame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hadalsame.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}