Friday January 12, 2024
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Somalia's Acting Foreign Minister Ali Omar Balad in Ankara, Türkiye, Jan. 11, 2023. (AA Photo)
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and the Somalian Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Minister Ali Omar Balad discussed Türkiye-Somalia ties and regional developments in Ankara on Thursday.
No further information was shared about the closed-door meeting between Fidan and Balad.
Türkiye and Somalia, a Horn of Africa nation, have longstanding ties of friendship, security and development aid.
Since 2013, Türkiye has assumed a facilitating role in the talks between the federal government of Somalia and the Somaliland administration.
Somaliland, which has not received official recognition since declaring independence from Somalia in 1991, acts as an independent entity administratively, politically and security-wise, while the central government has been unable to establish control over the territory.
The issue has not seen significant progress due to lingering contentious issues, preventing the completion of talks between the two sides in Djibouti in 2020, and resulting in a failure to reach an agreement.
In Somalia, Turkish nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and companies are extensively active in education, energy and finance. Since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited the country in 2011, Türkiye has built an 80,000-square-meter (861,112-square-foot) embassy in Mogadishu, its biggest embassy in Africa.
Humanitarian organizations helped avert a famine in 2022 when Somalia witnessed one of the worst droughts in four decades. A pair of Turkish and Somali companies are also building a biogas power plant in Mogadishu to be completed by the end of this year.
Türkiye pledged full support to establishing peace and stability in Ethiopia after clashes between federal forces and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) broke out in 2020. When the war ended, the Turkish Maarif Foundation immediately opened a school in Tigray. The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) has also opened its first office in Africa in Ethiopia to deliver humanitarian aid and cultural projects.