Turkiye, much like the financially powerful Gulf states and the security-driven Israel, has grown increasingly visible across the Horn of Africa.
Turkie President Erdogan and Ethiopian president Abbiye Ahmed
These actors have been cultivating political goodwill, extending economic reach, and forging security partnerships throughout the region, engaging both state and non-state actors in pursuit of influence and economic gain.
Turkiye’s entry into the region can be traced to the turn of the twenty-first century and the rise of now President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Africa policy broadened Turkish engagement well beyond the Horn to the continent at large. That engagement was first anchored in Ethiopia. Early diplomatic contact gradually gave way to economic cooperation and the expansion of Turkish foreign policy southward. Ankara’s roots in Addis Ababa run deeper as Turkiye established its first Sub-Saharan embassy there in 1926, a historical foothold that has since been built upon across successive decades.
The gradual deepening of economic cooperation, visible in expanding bilateral trade and a growing Turkish role in Ethiopian infrastructure and textiles, has in recent years encountered the challenge of intensifying geo-strategic competition.
Other Middle Eastern powers, several of them Turkiye’s rivals, have moved into the same space, complicating Ankara’s position.
the increasingly assertive character of Turkish foreign policy under Erdogan has required Ankara to navigate a layered set of tensions, ranging from its relationships with the West, Russia, and China, to rivalries within the Middle East and the Horn of Africa itself.
One illustration of this balancing act is Turkiye’s relationship with Egypt. Following a prolonged estrangement, rooted in Ankara’s support for Mohamed Morsi’s government before it was toppled by the al-Sisi-led military in 2013, the two countries have in recent years managed to construct a working relationship.
Turkiye has maintained this alongside its longstanding ties with Ethiopia, despite the two countries being on opposing sides of the Nile dispute. To navigate this tension, Ankara has adopted what amounts to a deliberate policy of equidistance, lending support to neither claimant at the expense of the other.
This posture bears resemblance to the Two Pillars strategy through which Washington, during the Cold War, sustained working relationships with both Iran and Saudi Arabia simultaneously, despite those two powers holding often conflicting regional interests.
The Turkish approach is reinforced by Ethiopia’s own hedging strategy toward the various Middle Eastern powers now vying for influence in its neighbourhood. Addis Ababa has been broadening its strategic depth with conspicuous speed. After hosting President Erdogan on February 17 this year, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed welcomed Israeli President Isaac Herzog just eight days later, on February 25. The sequencing was deliberate.
Israel has, in recent years, emerged as one of Turkiye’s more significant geopolitical rivals in the middle east, particularly in its securitised posture toward the region, where the two countries increasingly operate in overlapping competitive spaces. The back-to-back visits were a visible demonstration of Addis Ababa’s intent to engage all middle powers without subordinating itself to any single patron.
Ethiopia’s Gulf diplomacy follows the same logic. Its relationship with the UAE has expanded steadily since 2018 and continues to deepen, with Abu Dhabi reportedly among those backing Ethiopia’s push to secure maritime access. Saudi Arabia is also a priority, with Addis Ababa working to draw Saudi capital into the country and position Riyadh as a long-term economic partner.
Within this increasingly crowded field, Ankara nonetheless holds a strong and structurally grounded position in relation to Ethiopia. That was made clear by the sequence of events surrounding the Memorandum of Understanding Ethiopia signed with Somaliland in January 2024, reportedly granting Addis Ababa a lease on a Red Sea port in exchange for a degree of diplomatic recognition of the breakaway territory.
The agreement drew immediate condemnation from Mogadishu, which regards Somaliland as sovereign Somali territory, and triggered a prolonged diplomatic standoff. Turkiye, which holds extensive investments and deep political ties in Somalia, found itself implicated.
Although Ankara is credited with facilitating the dialogue that produced the Ankara Declaration in December 2024, a framework intended to stabilise Ethiopia-Somalia relations, its leverage in that process reflected how central both countries are to Turkish regional strategy. Ankara’s role as mediator, rather than as a partisan, in a dispute that directly threatened its interests in Somalia speaks to the sophistication of its regional posture.
The question of Red Sea access has been the primary organising principle of Ethiopian foreign policy for several years, and the MoU with Somaliland was its most visible expression. Turkiye’s implicit support for Ethiopia’s maritime ambitions, even while declining to endorse any position that would antagonise Mogadishu, reflects the layered calculus Ankara brings to the relationship.
While many analysts treat Somalia as the centrepiece of Turkish strategy in the Horn, Ethiopia’s position within Ankara’s strategic thinking is arguably more foundational. The argument becomes clear when examined through the lens of Turkish foreign policy’s core driver: economic interest.
Erdogan’s remaking of Turkish foreign policy has placed economic diplomacy at the centre of national strategy. The goal has been to build political relationships that generate economic dividends, expanding markets and investment destinations for a Turkish economy that has, in the past decade, faced sustained pressure.
That agenda has, however, met repeated obstacles across much of the Middle East and the Horn alike. In Libya, Syria, and across much of the Arab world, Turkish engagement remains heavily constrained by active conflict and volatile political landscapes.
Even its warming toward the Gulf states in recent years, following the rupture triggered by Ankara’s support for Qatar during the 2017 Gulf Crisis, has been driven partly by a need for financial stabilisation rather than strategic confidence.
Somalia presents its own version of this problem. Mogadishu has made extensive concessions to Ankara, including access to maritime resources, energy infrastructure, and development projects. Yet Turkish investment there rests on structurally fragile ground.
The Federal Government faces persistent challenges from federal member states resistant to what they perceive as centralising overreach, and the security situation with regards to the terrorist group al-Shabab has compelled Turkiye to assume an increasingly direct role, including the deployment of fighter aircraft to support the administration.
Sudan compounds the picture further. Despite Ankara’s reported alignment with General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the civil war that erupted in 2023, the conflict has produced no clear trajectory toward resolution, extending the securitised and circumscribed character of Turkish engagement there indefinitely.
Ethiopia stands apart from this pattern. Despite the residual instability of its post-conflict northern regions, the country remains comparatively stable and its political institutions comparatively functional. Addis Ababa is actively pursuing economic liberalisation and restructuring, and it is actively seeking foreign investment to underwrite that process.
For a Turkish foreign policy whose ambitions are economic, Ethiopia offers what most of the region cannot: a relatively secure environment with genuine commercial depth.
The convergence of these interests was visible in Erdogan’s February visit. Among the range of agreements concluded, one set a target of reaching one billion US dollars in bilateral trade, a figure that reflects the ambition each side brings to the relationship. More substantively, the visit confirmed that Turkiye supports Ethiopia’s pursuit of sea access in principle, while carefully calibrating that support so as not to formally contest Somali sovereignty claims over Somaliland.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed used the occasion to encourage Erdogan to deploy Turkish diplomatic weight toward Ethiopia’s regional objectives, a request that speaks to how far the relationship has matured beyond its origins in development cooperation.
That maturation points to something analysts of the region have been slow to acknowledge. Ethiopia is the Horn’s most significant state in both political and geopolitical terms. Turkish foreign policy, shaped more by pragmatic interest than by ideological alignment, will continue to reflect that reality. For Ankara, Addis Ababa is the gateway to a region it is determined to remain present in.
By Mahder Nesibu, Researcher, Horn Review
Source:hornreview.org/2026/04/08