A Turkish Armed Forces A400M transport aircraft—the same heavy-lift platform used for military logistics—carried a 40-member AFAD search-and-rescue and humanitarian team, a national medical rescue unit from the Health Ministry, two Kizilay personnel, trained rescue dogs and fully equipped search vehicles to the disaster zone.
The Ministry of National Defence dispatched a second A400M, carrying a 22-member team from its Humanitarian Assistance Brigade along with specialised technical equipment.
It is a small but telling illustration of a broader reality: the aircraft, logistics networks, and trained personnel that make Türkiye a credible defence partner within NATO are the same assets that enable it to respond to a disaster on the other side of the Atlantic within hours.
Health diplomacy
Türkiye’s humanitarian footprint is perhaps most visible in healthcare, both in places much of the world has overlooked and, at times, within NATO territory itself.
In Mogadishu, the Recep Tayyip Erdogan Training and Research Hospital—built by TIKA and reopened in 2015, still widely known by its former name, Digfer—has operated as one of Somalia’s principal referral hospitals through years of conflict and instability.
Beyond providing medical care, the facility has trained Somali healthcare professionals alongside Turkish doctors and nurses in a country where many international actors scaled back their presence long ago.
In Gaza, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, built and equipped by TIKA at a cost of approximately $70 million, served for years as a major cancer treatment centre for Palestinians.
The facility was later struck and rendered inoperable during Israel’s military campaign, highlighting the growing risks faced by humanitarian infrastructure operating in active conflict zones.
Yet one of the most significant examples of Türkiye’s health diplomacy occurred much closer to home.
When COVID-19 overwhelmed European healthcare systems in the spring of 2020, several EU member states restricted exports of masks, ventilators and protective equipment as shortages intensified across the continent.
Despite facing its own domestic pressures, Türkiye dispatched military cargo aircraft carrying medical supplies to Italy and Spain—delivering around 450,000 masks through NATO-coordinated efforts—as well as to the United Kingdom and the United States.
Boxes arriving in Madrid and Rome carried verses from the 13th-century poet Rumi about hope emerging from despair.
It was an unusual moment. A country still developing aspects of its own healthcare infrastructure demonstrated an ability to project medical assistance abroad that, in some respects, wealthier blocs struggled to provide even among their own members.
Foreign policy analysts frequently cite the episode as one of the clearest examples of Türkiye transforming humanitarian capacity into diplomatic capital—a form of influence that deserves consideration alongside more traditional measures of alliance contributions.
Perhaps the most revealing perspective comes not from Turkish institutions themselves, but from independent international monitors.
Development Initiatives’ Global Humanitarian Assistance reports have repeatedly ranked Türkiye among the world’s leading humanitarian donors.
The country placed first in absolute humanitarian assistance in 2017, 2018 and 2019, while consistently ranking at or near the top when aid is measured as a share of gross national income (GNI)—a metric many analysts regard as a more meaningful indicator of national commitment than raw dollar figures.
In both 2017 and 2018, Türkiye topped the GNI-based rankings, ahead of countries such as Norway and Luxembourg.
According to OECD-DAC data, Türkiye’s official development assistance reached 0.96 percent of GNI in 2021, nearly three times the OECD-DAC average of 0.33 percent.
These figures are rarely at the centre of discussions about Türkiye’s role in the international system.
Yet as NATO leaders gather in Ankara, they provide an important reminder that influence is measured not only by military capabilities, but also by a country’s ability to deliver assistance, build institutions and respond when others need help most.
Related
If Kizilay and AFAD represent the emergency-response face of Türkiye’s humanitarian engagement, TIKA and the Maarif Foundation embody its longer-term, structural dimension.
Its programmes span a wide range of sectors, from healthcare infrastructure and access to clean water to agricultural development and vocational training.
The organisation’s approach is designed to support communities across different stages of life, investing in long-term social and economic development rather than short-term relief alone.
The Maarif Foundation plays a similar role in education.
It has built an international network of schools across dozens of countries, many of which were previously associated with the Fethullah Gulen Terror Organisation (FETO) and were transferred to the foundation’s management following the 2016 coup attempt.
Today, the network offers an alternative model of Turkish-curriculum education for students around the world.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described this global network as the result of deliberate institution-building rather than ad hoc diplomacy.
Speaking at an iftar reception for foreign ambassadors, Erdogan noted that Türkiye’s diplomatic missions abroad had increased from 163 to 262 over the past 22 years.
He also highlighted that TIKA now operates 63 offices serving 170 countries across five continents, while the Maarif Foundation runs educational programmes in 55 countries.
These efforts are complemented by institutions such as the Yunus Emre Institute, AFAD, Kizilay and Anadolu Agency.
According to Erdogan, the guiding principle behind this outreach is that humanitarian assistance should not be determined by ethnicity, religion or nationality.
Türkiye’s approach, he argued, is centred on supporting people in need regardless of their background.
A genuinely global country
Taken together, Türkiye’s defence-industrial growth, disaster response capacity, health diplomacy, development cooperation and cultural outreach are not separate strands of foreign policy.
They are different expressions of the same underlying capability: a state with the institutions, logistics networks and accumulated experience to operate effectively across multiple regions and sectors.
For NATO allies gathering in Ankara, Türkiye’s case is not simply that it is a valuable military ally that also engages in humanitarian work.
Rather, it is that few alliance members combine military, humanitarian, development and educational capabilities on a comparable scale.
From the Sahel to the Horn of Africa, from Gaza to the Balkans, and from Cox’s Bazar to Caracas, Türkiye has built a presence that extends far beyond traditional security partnerships. That breadth of engagement has become a source of influence in its own right.
As Ankara hosts alliance leaders this July, Türkiye’s most distinctive contribution is not a single capability but the combination of them all.
