ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Ethiopia and Somalia early next year after brokering a deal to end tensions between the two Horn of Africa neighbors, he said on X Sunday.
“I will visit Ethiopia and Somalia in the first two months of the New Year,” he wrote in a message that referred to the deal between Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in Ankara on December 11.
The pair agreed to end their nearly year-long bitter dispute after hours of talks brokered by Erdogan, who hailed the breakthrough as “historic.”
The dispute began in January when landlocked Ethiopia struck a deal in with Somalia’s breakaway region Somaliland to lease a stretch of coastline for a port and military base.
In return, Somaliland — which declared independence from Somalia in 1991 in a move not recognized by Mogadishu — said Ethiopia would give it formal recognition, although this was never confirmed by Addis Ababa.
Somalia branded the deal a violation of its sovereignty, setting international alarm bells ringing over the risk of renewed conflict in the volatile Horn of Africa region.
Turkiye stepped in to mediate in July, holding three previous rounds of talks — two in Ankara and one in New York — before last week’s breakthrough, which won praise from the African Union, Washington and Brussels.
Fresh from his latest diplomatic success, Erdogan on Friday phoned Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and he offered “to step in to resolve the disputes between Sudan and the United Arab Emirates,” his office said.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been mired in a brutal conflict between army chief Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo who leads the RSF.
Sudan’s army-backed government has repeatedly accused the UAE of supporting the RSF — a claim which UAE has consistently denied.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced over 11 million more.