Somalia-Ethiopia will meet next month for a third round, the top Turkish diplomat said.
By Ezgi Akin
ANKARA — A second round of Ethiopia and Somalia talks in Ankara ended without a breakthrough on Tuesday. The two sides will next meet in September, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said.
“We will reconvene in Ankara on Sept. 17 for a third round, with the hope of successfully concluding this process,” Fidan said after two days of talks. He described the progress achieved as “notable.”
The remarks came after roughly 36 hours of indirect talks mediated by Turkish officials between Somali Foreign Minister Ahmed Moallim Fiqi and his Ethiopian counterpart, Taye Atske Selassie, at the Foreign Ministry in Ankara.
“I am pleased to announce that the number and extent of issues we discussed has increased significantly compared to the first round,” Fidan added.
The second round of negotiations that were initially planned for September were brought forward to this week after Fidan’s Aug. 3 meeting with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud that “concrete results” were expected from the talks during a phone call on Sunday.
The first round of the talks was held on July 1.
The rescheduling of the talks and Fidan’s announcement that Ankara was working to mediate a plan proposed by Turkey had stirred optimism about a resolution of the conflict between the two African countries. Somalia and Ethiopia are at odds over a deal signed Jan. 1 between Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland and Ethiopia that would grant Addis Ababa access to the Red Sea in return for recognition of Somaliland. Somaliland restored its independence from Somalia in 1991, but its independence was recognized neither by Somalia nor by the international community. Mogadishu rejected the agreement as a violation of its sovereignty and called it a cause for war.
Fidan said last week that Ankara was working on reconciling the two neighbors under a settlement proposal that foresees granting landlocked Ethiopia access to the Red Sea via Somali territory in return for fully recognizing Somalia’s territorial integrity and political sovereignty. The sticking points in the negotiations remain unclear.
“As a result of a solution, Ethiopia will have direct access to the sea,” Selassie said on Tuesday, speaking alongside Fidan.
Fiqi, in turn, stressed that his country was hoping the settlement will be in accordance with international maritime laws and “will preserve the dignity of the Somali people and their right to access resources.”
Both the foreign ministers expressed their hopes for reaching a solution during the third round of negotiations next month. “There are important convergences on some major principles,” Fidan added without elaborating.
A Turkish diplomatic source briefing the media as the talks were ongoing Monday described them as “a long process.”
The two countries’ foreign ministers didn’t hold face-to-face talks but negotiated indirectly through Turkish officials, according to the source.
Big asks
According to Kaan Devecioglu, the director of the Africa Program at the Ankara-based think tank Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies, the main sticking point is both countries’ “reluctance to compromise on their maximalist demands.”
“Somalia primarily expects Ethiopia to withdraw from the memorandum of understanding signed with Somaliland,” he told Al-Monitor.
“On the other hand, it appears that Ethiopia is using the MoU signed with Somaliland as leverage in the talks, seeking extensive rights for access to the sea from Somalia.”
Yet he added that there is still room for optimism in the talks, as the two countries have decided to continue the negotiations.
“It suggests that reaching common ground is not impossible,” Devecioglu concluded.
Ankara, which has publicly backed the territorial integrity of Somalia — home to Turkey’s largest military base abroad — in the conflict, also enjoys close military and commercial ties with Addis Ababa. Ethiopia purchased more than a dozen drones from Turkey in 2021.
