Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is using the chaos of civil war in Libya to carve out a new Turkish power base in the Maghreb. Erdoğan’s ambitions in North Africa will not only disrupt an already deteriorating political situation in Libya, they’ll also exacerbate tenuous political issues across the European Union and Middle East.
Erdoğan’s grandiose campaign to establish influence in Libya began in response to Turkey’s exclusion from the Israel-Cyprus-Greece undersea gas pipeline project. Threatened by a shortage in energy supplies, Erdoğan looked to conflict-torn yet oil-rich Libya to secure his own source of cheap foreign energy for Turkey.
Located in the center of the Maghreb region of North Africa, Libya has suffered from sectarianism and foreign intervention ever since Muammar Gaddafi was deposed by a NATO-backed popular uprising in 2011. The current conflict in Libya is broadly divided between the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) and the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army (LNA), a populist insurgency backed by the United States, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
The LNA is headed by Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar, a well-respected military commander and prominent critic of jihadi terror groups and the Muslim Brotherhood. Threatened by the prospect of an LNA-controlled Libya, Erdoğan, seeming acting out of naked self-interest, has committed Turkish troops and military assets in support of the GNA, shattering precarious ceasefire negotiations and escalating the conflict from low-level skirmishing to protracted, high-intensity open war.
From a regional security perspective, Erdoğan’s effort to convert Libya into a Turkish proxy state has already drawn sharp criticism from E.U. and NATO defense ministers. Relations between Turkey and France have become especially tense ever since a May 2019 flare-up in the Eastern Mediterranean. During this incident, Turkish naval frigates were hailed for inspection by French patrol vessels, likely on suspicion that they were transporting an illegal arms shipment to Libya. In response, the Turkish frigates repeatedly pinged the French vessel with radar targeting signatures, an action that typically heralds a ship-to-ship missile strike.
In a strongly-worded statement, Agnès von der Muhll, the spokeswoman for the French Foreign Ministry, denounced the Erdoğan regime for its repeated arms embargo violations in Libya and its aggressive interdiction activities in the Mediterranean.
“Turkey’s support for the ongoing offensive of the Government of National Accord goes directly against efforts to secure an immediate truce,” declared von de Muhll. “This support is coupled with hostile and unacceptable behavior by the Turkish maritime forces towards NATO allies, aimed at hampering efforts to implement the United Nations arms embargo.”
Rebooting the Libyan oil market
If Turkey is able to consolidate a power base in Libya, Erdoğan will be able to leverage his mounting hard-power influence to restart and control the country’s lucrative oil-export economy. Prior to the shutdown of its oil fields, Libya was one of the E.U.’s largest oil suppliers. Before the outbreak of prolonged civil unrest, the European Union accounted for close to 85 percent of Libya’s entire oil export output.
Since the dissolution of the Gaddafi regime, Libya’s National Oil Company (NOC), currently based out of GNA-controlled Tripoli, has been responsible for managing Libya’s oil export-driven economy. As Erdoğan escalates Turkey’s military footprint in Libya, Turkish Petroleum, a state-run energy exploration and production firm, has begun lobbying for oil export concessions from the NOC. Around the same time, the Turkish government, in partnership with the Libyan oil industry, announced a joint agreement to establish a new (yet heavily contested) economic exclusion zone to explore potential hydrocarbon drill sites in the Mediterranean.
With Turkey expected to increase its support for the GNA, it could be that Erdoğan plans to exploit the chaos of an escalating GNA-LNA conflict to expand his geo-strategic stranglehold over essential Libyan infrastructure. For now, several major oilfields and four key export ports, including a deep-water port at the Gulf of Sirte, have been blockaded by LNA-aligned militia units. However, as Turkish troops and GNA forces gear up for a major offensive, Erdoğan, working through proxies in Turkish Petroleum, may soon have direct control over Libya’s oil production and distribution network.
A second European migrant crisis?
There is also concern, especially among E.U. stakeholders in the Mediterranean, that Turkey’s intervention in Libya could catalyze a second wave of North African migration into Europe. Despite calling for an “end to unlawful attacks,” Erdoğan has made no attempt to use his substantial geo-political clout in Libya to enforce peacekeeping or pursue peaceful negotiations.
As the civil war intensifies, more than 48,000 refugees and 635,000 migrants have been hemmed into overcrowded detention centers across Libya. According to the UNHCR, a further 1.3 million Libyans are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. By continuing to disrupt U.N.-led peace negotiations, Turkey is increasing the chances of both a domestic humanitarian emergency and a region-wide migration crisis. In the midst of global economic recession and an ongoing pandemic, a migrant crisis in neighboring Libya has the potential to overwhelm the E.U.’s already strained social services and border control mechanisms.
Impacts in the Middle East
Erdoğan’s incursion into Libya is already having profound implications on the balance of power in the Middle East. In many ways, Erdoğan’s campaign to entrench influence in Libya bears a striking resemblance to Iran’s persistent efforts to acquire political and economic control in Iraq. In the case of Libya, Erdoğan’s overarching foreign policy objective is to turn the war-torn country into a Turkish proxy state, undermining its geo-economic sovereignty and establishing a strategically valuable power base in North Africa.
The formation of a Turkish proxy state in Libya also threatens to legitimize and expand the political cachet of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization with a long history of political violence and support for fundamentalist theological figures. Thanks to Turkish backing, the Muslim Brotherhood has become one of the largest political organizations in GNA-controlled Libya. By gifting the Muslim Brotherhood a seat of power in the Maghreb, Erdoğan will further aggravate region-wide sectarian tensions, exacerbating already fragile socio-political situations in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Egypt.
Erdoğan’s pursuit of hegemony in North Africa is driving Libya deeper into conflict. If Turkish military forces are left unchecked, the ensuing humanitarian disaster will trigger a cascade of adverse geopolitical and geo-economic tensions across the European Union and Middle East. To safeguard regional stability, the international community must apply pressure to Turkey and force the regime to evacuate its military assets and advisers from Libya. When Erdoğan’s influence is jettisoned from Libya, impartial peacekeeping and good-faith ceasefire negotiations can finally recommence.
Mikael Virtanen is a Helsinki-based entrepreneur with a focus on chemical manufacturing, commodities trading and crisis management. He leverages his broad commercial and business experience to write about global economic and political affairs.