On Monday 3 October 2022 a senior Turkish ministerial delegation (ministers of foreign affairs, energy and defense) went to the Libyan capital Tripoli, whose tranquility, after the overthrow of Gaddafi by the West in 2011, was often troubled by fierce fighting between rival militias. For the Turks, the game was worth the money, writes political analyst Renaud Girard in a comment to the French newspaper Le Figaro. The interim Libyan government of Abdel Hamid Dbeiba has signed an operational memorandum with them to prepare for the exploitation of oil and gas of the rich continental shelf that connects the two countries under the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. This “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) activates the agreement in principle signed on November 27, 2019 in Ankara between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fayez al-Sarraj, head of the Libyan government recognized by the UN.
Trying to monopolize a strip of sea between the Libyan coast and the Turkish coast near the city of Kash (southwest of Antalya), the Turks and those Libyans who have decided to be their vassals are violating international maritime law. Because they happily trample the Greek maritime space (especially near the Greek islands of Crete and Rhodes). That is why these Turkish-Libyan agreements were deemed invalid by both the EU and the US. To thank him for signing the 2019 agreement, the Turkish army in June 2020 offered a military victory to Sarraj, who successfully pushed back General Haftar’s troops besieging Tripoli. The Turks currently have 2,000 soldiers from their regular army on Libyan soil and 6,000 Syrian mercenaries from the enclave of Idlib, a Syrian territory currently occupied by Turkey.
A strategic challenge for the EU
In the agreement of October 3, 2022, it was Dbeyba, the deposed interim Libyan prime minister (since theoretically ousted by a vote of no confidence voted by the last democratically elected parliament), who thanked the Turkish military for the assistance of the drones, to expel from Tripoli the people who wanted to install the new prime minister appointed by the parliament, Fathi Bashaga (interior minister from October 2018 to March 2021) Dbeiba was appointed in February 2021 interim minister – president of a conclave of Libyan personalities gathered in Geneva from the United Nations. But the perimeter of his mandate did not authorize him to sign foreign policy agreements.
The Turkish-Libyan agreement of 3 October represents a strategic challenge for the EU. The strip of sea that it mistakenly delineates in the eastern Mediterranean hinders the development of the EastMed project, a gas pipeline that supplies southern Europe with Israeli (Tamar and Leviathan fields) and Egyptian (Zohr fields) through Cyprus and Greece. The advantage of the EastMed pipeline is that it frees Europeans from any Russian or Turkish pressure.
But Putin and Erdogan, who met in Astana (Kazakhstan) on October 13, 2022, want to make Turkey the gas center of Europe. The advantage of the Turkish territory is that it avoids any European or American sanctions. Russia can supply gas to Turkish territory, which will then become Turkish. Unlike currency, gas has no national smell. Russian gas transported via the Blue Stream 1 pipeline arrives at the port of Novorossijsk to cross the Black Sea to Samsun, then to Ankara, where it connects to the Nabucco pipeline. From there it goes to the European part of Turkey, then to Bulgaria, then to Hungary.
In return, Russia, which is present in Libya through the private “Wagner” army, agrees to hand over all of western Libya to Turkey. The Russians did not condemn the Turkish-Libyan agreement of October 3, which contradicts maritime law, the Turks recognize Dbeiba, the Russians Bashaga. Libya is turning into a condominium: in the west in the hands of Turkey and in the east in the hands of Russia and Egypt. President al-Sisi is on excellent terms with his Russian counterpart, who is ready to sell him nuclear power plants.
What will happen the day the Turkish navy deploys the frigate to secure its illegal sea strip? Will France alone help the Greeks? In the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey already regularly uses extortion of migrants against Europeans. It blocks all negotiations for the reunification of the island of Cyprus, from which it takes 38% of the territory with a military operation in the summer of 1974, taking advantage of an America blocked in Watergate.
One thing is certain: to transform his country into the gas hub of Europe, the astute Erdogan will stop at nothing.
