Turkey’s aid politics in Somalia: the moral economy of a benevolent expansion

Kayserilioğlu E.

Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 2024 (SSCI) identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Basım Tarihi: 2024
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1080/14683857.2024.2430062
  • Dergi Adı: Southeast European and Black Sea Studies
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, IBZ Online, International Bibliography of Social Sciences, Historical Abstracts, Humanities Abstracts, Index Islamicus, Political Science Complete, Public Affairs Index, Sociological abstracts, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: humanitarian aid, Islamic humanitarianism, moral economy, Somalia, Turkey
  • TED Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

This study examines Turkey’s aid politics in Somalia by investigating actors, ideas, and organizational networks involved in the making of humanitarian and development projects. Drawing on interviews with Turkish aid workers–including experts, local coordinators, and volunteers from state, humanitarian, and Islamic non-governmental organizations (NGOs)–this research elucidates how solidarist motivations of NGOs created strategic opportunities for the state to expand its market and regional interests. The article presents that NGOs perceived helping Somalia not only as a humanitarian effort but also as an Islamic and nationalist responsibility. Solidarist ideologies and practices of Turkish NGOs created market and political advantages and legitimized them as Turkey’s benign interventions to protect Somalia from the Western aid system. The state-NGO collaboration in aid projects conflated solidarist and self-interested motives, and it configured a moral economy embedded in Turkey’s aid politics, which this research conceptualizes as a benevolent expansion, legitimizing unequal exchange and hierarchies in this development partnership as good deeds in favour of Somalia.