In a bizarre development to the mediation claims of Turkey in unproductive talks between the Republic of Somaliland and a former partner in a failed merger, Somalia, the special Turkish envoy to the talks, Ambassador Olgar Bekar, flew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for talks with elements striving to carve Somaliland into states.
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Ambassador Bekar met with Abdikahim Mohamed Ahmed ‘Dhoobo-Daareed’, the former House Speaker who had been evicted by the Puntland parliament on 7 November and Abdihakim Omar Amey, the Somalia Ambassador to Ethiopia on Friday.
Dhoobo-daareed has been, since his eviction, busy putting together a so-called federal-Somalia loyal state in Eastern Sanaag of Somaliland to be called Makhir or Highland. He had proclaimed that, together with Sool and Buuhoodle areas, he aimed to form another clan-based federal Somalia state uniting these regions. Dhoobo-daareed’s primary objective, he said, was to show Puntland authorities that he was an authority to be reckoned with and that Eastern Sanaag areas which he hailed from would no longer be part of Puntland.
Abdihakim Amey, the former Vice President of the Puntland Federal State of Somalia, comes from the Buuhoodle area. He had never concealed his undivided desire to bring Buuhoodle under the federal system of Somalia.
Eastern Sanaag, Sool, and Buuhoodle are historically, geographically and politically within the Somaliland Republic boundaries. Somalia, however, operating through Puntland, in part, and on direct interventions, on other occasions, has set aside a separate budget for the fragmentation of the Somaliland Republic taking advantage of its diplomatically recognized status with the world despite Somaliland’s more superior track record in state-building, democracy and stability for the past 29 years.
Ambassador Olgar Bekar represented his country in Mogadishu from November 2014 to November 2018 when he was replaced by the incumbent Mehmet Yilmaz.
This latest appearance of Ambassador Bekar with the two protagonists of a Somalia federal state within Somaliland confirms Somaliland suspicions that Turkey is neither honest in its claims of neutrality nor had any intention of jeopardizing its hold on a teetering Somalia for objectivity.
Neither Bekar nor Turkey, itself, can credibly deny the ramifications of the ill-advised meeting which ensconced him with ultra federal Somalia loyalists.
Turkey has been building a Somalia military might the momentum of which augurs ill for the whole region and its geo-strategic potentials as many a political analyst pointed out.
