MOGADISHU, SOMALIA – On Tuesday, Puntland and Jubaland refused to join election talks that Turkish intelligence officials convened in Mogadishu. Both states rejected the Turkish mediation as one-sided. They say Ankara props up President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and cannot broker a fair deal. So the first big push to end Somalia’s election crisis opened with a boycott, not a breakthrough.
The session ran at the Turkish Hotel inside Aden Adde International Airport. Federal aides came. The leaders of Puntland and Jubaland stayed away, questioning Turkiye’s neutrality. For weeks, the two states had pressed the same point inside the Somali Future Council, an opposition bloc. They argued that Ankara should not steer election talks at all. Now they have turned that argument into a full boycott; the fight over who mediates has become part of the fight itself.
The core complaint is simple. Puntland and Jubaland see Turkish mediation as a friend of Villa Somalia wearing a referee’s shirt. Ankara arms the federal army, it flies the jets, and signed the oil and gas deals. Critics ask how a partner that deep in the government’s corner can judge a dispute against that same government. For the two states, the answer is that it cannot.
Recent events sharpen the doubt. Only days earlier, Turkish F-16 jets circled Baidoa while federal troops installed Mogadishu’s pick as leader of South West State. The Somali Digest traced how Villa Somalia seized South West State before with the same playbook. To Puntland and Jubaland, that record is the tell. They believe the Turkish mediation exists to bless outcomes Mogadishu has already chosen.
The doubt reaches beyond the federal states. Senator Abdi Ismail Samatar, a scholar and sharp critic of the government, called the whole deal a blunder. He said the opposition made a “serious mistake” by letting Turkiye’s deputy spy chief act as mediator. He also mocked the idea that Ankara could be fair. A state “widely known for its heavy handedness against the Turkish opposition” would hardly play neutral abroad, he argued.
Samatar went further still. He accused Hassan Sheikh of chasing an “authoritarian and deeply corrupt roadmap” and warned that the president could drag the country toward a new civil war. He pointed to Baidoa and to what he called attempts to encircle Puntland. His verdict on the Turkish mediation was blunt: prayers alone would not fix a process built on the wrong broker.
Turkiye’s Deep Stake in the Fight
Ankara is no bystander here. For a decade, Turkiye has poured money, troops, and arms into Somalia. The country also runs the busiest port and airport in Mogadishu. Turkish firms hold drilling rights off the coast. Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame warned in May that Ankara’s public embrace of Hassan Sheikh risked deepening the constitutional crisis. He said genuine partnership should strengthen institutions, not a single leader. His point lands harder now. Turkish mediation cannot calm a crisis that many Somalis blame partly on Turkiye’s own choices.
Behind the boycott sits a hard deadline. Parliament’s mandate expired on April 14. The president’s own term ran out on May 15. Rivals and several federal states say the government now rules past its clock, with no fresh vote and no shared plan. The Somali Digest has tracked this drive in its work on Hassan Sheikh’s constitutional gambit. That backdrop explains the heat around the Turkish mediation.
A wider meeting is set for Thursday. This time Western diplomats join Turkiye, the federal government, and opposition figures at one table. Backers call it the first real try to bring every major player into the room. Puntland and Jubaland say they will attend that broader session, even after snubbing the Turkish-only track. So the format itself has become the concession.
The stakes are steep, and the calendar is short. Turkish officials have warned Hassan Sheikh that the situation could worsen if leaders reach no deal before October. Meanwhile foreign troops keep drawing down, and al-Shabaab keeps testing the gaps, a danger the Digest laid out in its report of a study on the group’s edge after the ATMIS exit. A widened table may yet break the deadlock. But the boycott has already made one thing clear. Somalia’s federal states will not let Turkish mediation write the rules of a vote they do not trust.
