WARSHEIKH, SOMALIA – Turkiye’s ambassador to Somalia, Ferhat Alkan, and the commander of the Turkish Task Force in Somalia walked the construction site of Turkiye’s spaceport at Warsheikh in Middle Shabelle within hours of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan telling the International Astronautical Congress in Antalya on Monday 5 October that building had begun. The ambassador asked the workers and the project managers when it would be finished. Ankara has set the project inside a lunar programme, beside a reported missile test plan and a troop mandate its parliament renewed in July. The government of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, whose four-year term ended in May, has published no text, land lease or ratification vote for a foreign launch site on the coast at Warsheikh, seventy kilometres north of Mogadishu in ground al-Shabaab fought over in January.
Antalya to Warsheikh in a Day
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke at the opening ceremony of the 77th International Astronautical Congress, which Turkiye is hosting in Antalya from 5 to 9 October. He said that “taking into account Turkey’s geographical conditions as well, we are laying the foundations for a historic cooperation in the space field with our friendly and brotherly Somalia,” and told the congress that construction of the spaceport had started. In the same speech he warned that “weaponizing space and turning it into a tool for an arms race is exceedingly wrong, and moreover, dangerous.”
The speech gave no construction timetable, no launch capacity and no financial arrangement, and it did not name Warsheikh. It set the spaceport inside Turkiye’s National Space Programme, whose lunar spacecraft is assembled and is due to fly on a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral in the first half of 2027.
Ferhat Alkan formally took up his post in Mogadishu on Monday 21 September and presented a copy of his credentials to Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Mohamed Ali “Nadaara”. In a visit reported on Tuesday 6 October, he then toured the Warsheikh site with Major General Sebahattin Kalkan, commander of the Turkish Task Force in Somalia, at the head of a delegation of diplomats, officers and businessmen. Ahmet Sami Isler, Somalia general manager of the Albayrak Group and chairman of the Turkiye-Somalia business council, briefed them on the construction, and the ambassador said that “with this project, Somalia will become one of the world’s leading centres in the field of space activities.” He also asked the workers and the project management about progress and the plans for completion.
The delegation visited a school and a hospital built with Turkish support, met district authorities, elders and fishermen, and none of the published accounts names a federal official among its hosts. The visit came hours after the president’s remarks, and both governments had recently stressed the need to speed up construction. On Tuesday 29 September an official in the area, speaking anonymously to a news agency, said the first phase at Warsheikh was due to be completed soon. Alper Aktas, the ambassador until 14 September, had promised that the first satellite would leave Somali soil in 2027.
What Warsheikh Has Been Promised and What Has Been Published
Talks between Ankara and Mogadishu on a site for testing missiles and launching space rockets were first reported on Tuesday 10 September 2024, and the chairman of the Somali parliament’s defence subcommittee said at the time that he knew nothing about them. On Thursday 19 December 2024 President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said that “the importance of Somalia hosting a launchpad for Turkish satellites is even more significant than the billions,” while the location and the money stayed undisclosed. At a joint press conference in Istanbul on Tuesday 30 December 2025, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that “under the agreements we have signed, we plan to establish a spaceport in Somalia.”
Neither Ankara nor Mogadishu has released those agreements. Figures published in August 2025 put the site at 900 square kilometres on the Indian Ocean, with Turkiye granted exclusive use of a coastal block thirty kilometres by thirty, and an estimated cost above 350 million dollars. By February 2026 the same 900 square kilometre figure was in circulation, and the legal framework for the land allocation was still unclear. In July a French investigation placed the site at Warsheikh and dated the start of construction to mid-October 2025, two months before the Istanbul announcement.
No lease duration, revenue share, ownership structure or local employment quota for Warsheikh has been published, and no cabinet resolution or parliamentary vote approving a space agreement has been reported. Somalia’s parliament did vote on the earlier Turkish accords, endorsing the defence and economic cooperation framework signed on 8 February 2024 by 213 votes to three in a joint session on Wednesday 21 February 2024. The hydrocarbons accord signed in Istanbul on 7 March 2024 lets Turkiye recover up to ninety percent of annual production as costs while capping Somalia’s royalty at five percent. Any terms for Warsheikh would now be signed by the government of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, whose four-year term ended on 15 May 2026 and who has said he will stay until May 2027 under amendments that lengthened the term to five years.
The Missile Programme Reported for Warsheikh
On Wednesday 6 May 2026, people familiar with Ankara’s plans said Turkiye intended to test fire its new Yildirimhan intercontinental ballistic missile in Somalia later in the year at the earliest, a weapon with a stated range of 6,000 kilometres. Lists of candidate systems published in August 2025 included the Tayfun, which reached 561 kilometres in a 2022 test and struck within five metres of its sea target in 2023, among the systems a Somali coastal range would let Turkiye fire over open water. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has set a goal of pushing the Tayfun past 1,000 kilometres. Those lists also included the Tayfun Block 4, unveiled at the IDEF defence fair in 2025 as a hypersonic missile nearly ten metres long and weighing over seven tonnes, which had not yet been tested over open water.
The French investigation published in July described the Warsheikh site as a satellite launch base combined with a testing ground for long-range ballistic missiles, designed for systems with ranges of up to 2,000 kilometres. Satellite imagery cited alongside the investigation showed helicopter pads, barracks and underground storage, and the same accounts put completion of the first phase in the summer of 2027. The Turkish president’s warning against weaponising space on 5 October came five months after the Yildirimhan test plan was reported.
On Sunday 15 February 2026 a Turkish navy vessel offloaded battle tanks at Mogadishu port, and analysts quoted at the time said they were meant to secure a planned spaceport and missile testing facility near Mogadishu. The Somali government never confirmed what the tanks were for. In July the Turkish Grand National Assembly extended the mission of Turkish forces in Somalia for two years from 27 July 2026, allowing them to operate in areas the two countries determine jointly, and the motion did not mention a spaceport. No Somali text covering the ground at Warsheikh, or the troops who may guard it, has been published.
Al-Shabaab Country Around Warsheikh
On Sunday 18 January 2026 al-Shabaab claimed attacks on four army bases around Warsheikh, at Jabad-Godane, Ruun-Sheekhoow, Shaasqaad and Burka-Kaah, about two hours’ drive north of Mogadishu, and released pictures of seized vehicles, weapons and the bodies of soldiers. The army said it had repelled the assault and was clearing the area, and a second lieutenant at the scene said some of his men had been killed. Neither account was independently confirmed, and the fighting was described as part of a militant advance along the Middle Shabelle coast.
The coastal district sits in the same region where al-Shabaab retook Adan Yabaal on 16 April 2025, two months after the federal counteroffensive began. It is also the region where Turkish-trained Gorgor commandos joined an army operation against al-Shabaab in Warciise district in March 2026. The Warsheikh site is going up inside that contested region. Turkish F-16s were first seen operating from Aden Adde airport in January 2026, and on 30 June the defence ministry credited them with strikes in Lower Shabelle.
On Sunday 7 September crowds in Kismayo burned Turkish flags and carried posters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with blood painted on his hands, after an unclaimed strike on the Doolow home of General Mahad Abdirahman Aden. Eleven days later, on Friday 18 September, the general named a Turkish F-16 as the aircraft and accused senior federal officials of guiding it, while Mogadishu maintains the blast came from inside the house. On Monday 28 September Turkish F-16s struck near Baidoa in support of federal troops against forces loyal to former President Abdiaziz Laftagareen, and a district commissioner told protesters that Turkiye was “a new colonial power that is occupying Somalia.” A week later President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the spaceport’s construction to the world’s space industry, and his ambassador went to Warsheikh to ask when it would be finished.
