The Turkish parliament approved a presidential motion to extend by two years a military deployment in Somalia under a bilateral defense agreement.
The two-year operation aims to support Mogadishu’s counterterrorism operations and comes months after the two countries signed a defense and economic cooperation deal.
Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab has been waging an insurgency against the Somali government since 2006 in a bid to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state.
In 2017, Turkey established its largest overseas military base in Mogadishu, where it has been training Somali soldiers.
In February, Somalia’s Cabinet approved a ten-year defense and economic pact with Turkey, which includes providing training and equipment for the Somali Navy to help it protect the African country’s marine resources and threats such as terrorism and piracy.