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.

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.