The nature of the problem is familiar enough:
With the backing of 7,000 African Union peacekeepers, a mission known as Amisom, the transitional government controls only an area around the presidential palace in the capital, Mogadishu, the airport and the seaport.
Lawlessness across much of the rest of the country allows pirates to launch raids on shipping passing through the Gulf of Aden and far out into the Indian Ocean. In 2009, 47 vessels with 837 crew members were taken, despite the presence of an international naval force.
Violence, poverty and drought have spawned a humanitarian crisis that has seen almost two million Somalis displaced within the country. There are overcrowded Somali refugee camps in nearby Kenya, Yemen, Ethiopia and Djibouti.
What interested me was Turkey's recent hosting of a 3-day conference designed to inject new thinking into possible solutions:
The Turkish hosts of a conference to be held in Istanbul this week on conflict, piracy and the deepening humanitarian crisis in Somalia say the event will offer policymakers an opportunity to “rethink” solutions for the war-torn nation.
But even the UN officials helping Turkey arrange the three-day summit that begins on Friday have reminded delegates not to expect any “magical negotiation” that will resolve Somalia’s long-running problems.
I mean, this is beyond Turkey's recent activity in its neighborhood (the zero-problems-with-neighbors policy). This shows some genuine great power ambition.
I say, the more, the merrier. We're talking another New Core player with growing economic networks and a sizeable military force willing and able to go places and do things.
Very good sign, whatever the short-term outcome.
There has never been any mystery to me why I have immediately sold the foreign rights to all my books to a Turkish publisher. Like China, where this has also happened, Turkey is naturally a rising power on the make. It is in the zone where thinking about grand strategy holds great appeal, like a rising America in the late 19th C.