Introduction
Ethiopia, which has more than eighty ethnic identities in the country, has conflicted with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in Tigray for the past year. In the Tigray region, where approximately 7 million people live, the TPLF is one of the country’s oldest and most influential actors. The TPLF, an influential separatist group in the Tigray region nowadays, has also caused problems in the country’s political history. The TPLF, which struggled with Haile Selassie from 1930 to 1974, started to fight with Mengistu Haile Mariam while he ruled the country from 1974-1991 and now has begun to conflict with Abiy Ahmed from 2020-2022. These three periods mentioned have had different forms of government but with major similarities, including the constituencies from which they were drawn and their policies towards minority groups and neighboring states. The Ethiopian public opinion believes that evaluating the Ethiopian-Tigray conflict regarding Abiy Ahmed would be a delusion.
Ethiopia has a federal management approach. The elections, which were scheduled for August 2020 but had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were held independently in September 2020 in the Tigray region without following the government’s decision. Furthermore, this situation caused the crisis to escalate to the dimension of civil war. In response to the TPLF’s action, the Abiy Ahmed government annulled the elections, and the tension in the country escalated. According to the Federal Constitution in Ethiopia, which has a parliamentary and federal system divided into states depending on ethnicity, TPLF members and supporters state that in the parliament seats should be equally shared
