The Horn of Africa region has in the last two weeks been anticipating possible initial talks between Addis Ababa and Mogadishu, with unconfirmed reports indicating that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad would be leading attempts to mend diplomatic ties between Somalia and Ethiopia. On July 1, Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Hakan Fidan announced that Ankara had managed to get Somalia and Ethiopia into an initial dialogue to resolve the diplomatic row triggered by the controversial January 1 sea access deal between Addis Ababa and the breakaway Somaliland.
According to Fidan, Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Minister Taye Selassie and his Somali counterpart Ahmed Fiqi signed a joint declaration expressing mutual willingness to resolve the diplomatic tiff. The Turkish top diplomat said the talks had made significant progress and a second round of talks would be held on September 2. Hassan Sheikh pointed out that it was Ethiopia that requested Turkey to mediate between the countries.
He further made it clear that Ethiopia and Somalia did not hold direct talks in the Ankara meeting and that Turkey acted as the intermediary. President Mohamud who recalled his ambassador in Ethiopia over the sea access deal has in the past ruled out mediation with Addis Ababa unless they pull the plug on the deal with Somaliland.
So who initiated the Ankara talks? A Turkish diplomatic source told a local news agency that mediation efforts began after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed visited Erdogan in Ankara in May and conveyed a letter asking Turkey to mediate between the two countries.
A second source said Abiy sent former President Mulatu Teshome Wirtu as his special envoy to meet the Turkish president to lay the groundwork for mediation. Erdogan later instructed the relevant Turkish agencies to study the issue, culminating in the July 1 meeting between the Somali and Ethiopian foreign affairs ministers. Over the years, Ankara has cultivated strong relationships with both countries through extensive security operations, with the recent engagements being the Turkish unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs that changed the course of the two-year Tigray war and the naval deal between Turkey and Somalia.
