Ethiopia’s Strategic Ambiguity: The MoU Under the Sleeve

Mogadishu says the Ankara Declaration has overtaken the 2024 Ethiopia–Somaliland (MoU) deal. Addis Ababa still speaks about sovereign access to the sea, Berbera remains outside Somalia’s control, and President Irro’s U.S.-bound diplomacy is pushing the recognition contest toward Washington.

Somalia wants the January 2024 Ethiopia–Somaliland memorandum of understanding (MoU) treated as a closed chapter. Ethiopia has never quite said that.

That gap is becoming more visible as Mogadishu desperately continues to offer Addis Ababa commercial sea access under “Somali sovereignty” while Ethiopian officials deliberately and ambiguously continue to speak in much broader terms about a sovereign Red Sea outlet.

The Ankara Declaration lowered the temperature between Somalia and Ethiopia. It restored dialogue and gave both governments a way out of a dangerous confrontation. What it did not do was put an Ethiopian ship at a Somali port, produce a commercial corridor, or formally erase the agreement Addis Ababa signed with Hargeisa.

Now the dispute is moving into a new phase. President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi Irro left Hargeisa on September 3, on a U.S.-bound trip via Dubai. At the same time, Mogadishu is intensifying its own diplomacy with Washington and other partners to prevent Somaliland’s recognition campaign from gaining further ground. The diplomatic struggle over Somaliland is increasingly tied to Ethiopia’s unresolved search for the sea.

Ankara bought time. It did not deliver a port.

Somalia’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ali Mohamed Omar, has argued that the Ankara Declaration is now the governing framework for relations with Ethiopia. In Mogadishu’s reading, the old argument over whether the Somaliland memorandum is suspended, abandoned or technically alive is no longer useful. Ethiopia can obtain dependable commercial access through Somalia without touching Somalia’s territorial claims.

That is a coherent diplomatic position. It is also incomplete and misleading.

The December 2024 Ankara Declaration reaffirmed the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of Somalia and Ethiopia. It also recognized Ethiopia’s need for secure access to the sea and envisaged commercial arrangements negotiated under Somali sovereign authority. The first technical talks followed in February 2025 under Turkish mediation.

But the declaration did not publicly cancel the Ethiopia–Somaliland MoU. No Ethiopian instrument cancelling it has been released. No tripartite settlement involving Hargeisa exists. And nearly two years after Ankara, there is still no announced Ethiopian port agreement with Somalia, no named corridor, no published lease, no tariff schedule and no implementation timetable.

Ankara therefore looks more like a diplomatic suspension bridge than a final settlement. It prevented the 2024 crisis from becoming something worse. It did not resolve the strategic problem that produced the crisis in the first place.

Ethiopia is asking for........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)