Libya: Into the EastMed arena

Libya’s recent history shows how a region-wide confrontation can make

matters worse for vulnerable states – in Libya’s case, exacerbating the
problems it already had. In turn, the Libyan war has complicated the issue
of gas exploitation around Cyprus.

Since the Arab uprisings, Libya has been continually subject to the
impact of wider regional struggles, all the more so in recent times. This
began with an April 2019 attack on the capital, Tripoli, by a renegade
general, Khalifa Haftar. The offensive was backed by Saudi Arabia, armed
by the United Arab Emirates, supplied through Egypt, and checked only
by Turkey. For their part, Europeans watched on with seeming
helplessness, some of them protesting about the offensive while others
offered Haftar tacit support. The offensive provided as clear a depiction
of the regional battle lines drawn through Libya – and, increasingly, the
eastern Mediterranean – as one could hope to see. As is often the case in
regional battles, individual war fronts did not remain contained. And, in
Libya, Turkey saw a prime opportunity to advance its eastern
Mediterranean interests and provoke the coalition that had been
excluding it from the fruits of that sea.

Turkey has its own ties to Libya, and economic and geopolitical interests
that go beyond this regional competition. But Turkey has allowed two
main factors to shape its recent Libya policy. These are, firstly, a desire to
ensure that the UAE does not block Turkey in North Africa; and, secondly,
to leverage Libya’s long coastline to force the eastern Mediterranean gas
coalition into accommodating Turkish interests.

The intersection of these two policy drivers came with Haftar’s April 2019
attack on Tripoli. The sense of urgency and high stakes involved in the
operation demanded that Turkey break from its previously more subtle
policy of increasing its economic ties with Tripoli while quietly facilitating
arms shipments to anti-Haftar groups. Within weeks of the attack,
Turkish military advisers were on the ground helping organise the
defence, while expedited sales of equipment such as Turkish Bayraktar
drones and Kirpi armoured vehicles provided battlefield parity with
Haftar’s Emirati arsenal. Turkey not only ensured that Tripoli would not
fall but was instrumental in helping the Libyan government reclaim the
town of Gharyan, which served as Haftar’s forward operating base.

Turkey had allegedly been pressuring the Tripoli-based Government of

National Accord (GNA) since late 2018 to sign a memorandum of
understanding (MoU) that would delineate a direct maritime boundary
between the two and create an exclusive economic zone that cuts
through areas to which Greece claims maritime rights. This was driven by
Turkey’s growing concern over the proposed EastMed pipeline, which it
views as a threat to its Mediterranean energy interests. The GNA had
long been reluctant to commit to such a deal, as it feared this would
damage its relationships with Europe amid international power-sharing
negotiations. As such, Turkey used the GNA’s newfound reliance on it to
turn the screw – by refusing to commit further support until the MoU had
been signed. Even as Haftar steadily made territorial gains in the conflict,
the GNA remained hesitant to sign the MoU, putting its faith in what at
the time was the nascent ‘Berlin process’, which was designed to create
an international agreement on a ceasefire.

But, eventually, a desperate GNA, coming back empty-handed from a

tour of European capitals and Washington, relented to the Turkish
maritime offer. In November 2019, as Emirati drone strikes and the arrival
of Russian mercenaries pushed Haftar dangerously close to entering
Tripoli, the government signed the MoU with Turkey, along with a second
agreement on security assistance. Since then, Turkey has been
dispatching military advisers, drones, advanced armaments, and Syrian
fighters to the battlefield. It has committed to protecting the GNA, a
development that has provoked the Russian-facilitated provision of
Syrian fighters to the Haftar camp. Haftar has also now established direct
ties with Bashar al-Assad’s government in Damascus.

The audacious maritime agreement sent shockwaves through Brussels,

via Athens, Nicosia, Rome, and Paris. But the ire directed at the deal only
caused the GNA to dig in, given that Turkey had upheld its side of the
bargain by halting Haftar’s advance when Europe could not, and by
installing air-defence systems in Tripoli and Misrata. In response, Greece,
which was previously uninvolved in Libya’s crisis, came out strongly in
support of Haftar, effectively joining the French camp. Athens declared
the GNA-Turkey MoU illegal, while inviting the pro-Haftar speaker of
Libya’s divided parliament, Aguila Saleh, to Athens – even though he was
subject to an EU-mandated travel ban. This was followed by a formal
invitation to Haftar, who gave assurances to both Greece and Egypt that
he too viewed the MoU as illegal and would support them against Turkey
should he be victorious.

Egypt, in turn, tried to leverage Europe’s outrage to garner stronger

support for Haftar. In January this year, Egypt convened a ministerial-
level meeting between the European states involved in the EastMed
coalition – Cyprus, France, Greece, and Italy – to denounce Turkey’s MoU
and push for a settlement of Libya’s crisis in which they would secure
their interests by giving Haftar more support. The content of the
discussions caused enough disquiet for Italian foreign minister Luigi Di
Maio to refuse to sign the communiqué, likely because of Italy’s strong
interests in western Libya and its migration agreement with the GNA. But
– while Italy initiated efforts to secure an agreement between GNA prime
minister Fayez al-Sarraj and Haftar, hoping this would stabilise the
situation – Egypt, Greece, France, and the UAE continued in their efforts
to create a grander pro-Haftar coalition involving Tunisia and Algeria.
When this failed, they doubled down on the eastern Mediterranean
grouping, and in May released another joint denouncement of Turkey’s
eastern Mediterranean and Libya interventions.

Meanwhile, Germany attempted to follow through on the conference on

Libya that it hosted in January 2020 by positioning the European Union to
set up a mission to monitor the UN arms embargo on Libya. But eastern
Mediterranean dynamics muddied its efforts, as Athens pressed
successfully for a naval-focused mission aimed at blocking Turkey’s arms
shipments to the GNA. Turkey allegedly hit back by leaning on Malta to
veto the operation, in exchange for Turkish pressure on the GNA to stop
migrant flows to the island. In a shock move, Malta did so in May.

As Libya’s war sinks into a new stalemate, Turkey seems to have changed
the balance of power on the ground – and perhaps even in the eastern
Mediterranean. With GNA offensives throughout April reclaiming large
swathes of territory and all but ending Haftar’s hopes of conquering
Libya, the GNA-Turkey MoU appears to be here to stay. Although Haftar’s
backers will no doubt seek to escalate the war in response, Europe
should recognise the futility of this – and forestall the potential
unintended consequences such a move. After all, at the start of the war,
no one expected the conflict to intersect with eastern Mediterranean
energy competition in such a significant way. If cooler heads prevail, the
two issues could be de-escalated through a concerted decoupling that
targets each crisis independently. If not, they will continue to drive each
other into greater difficulties.

Tarek Megerisi is a policy fellow at ECFR specialising in Libyan affairs

and more generally politics, governance, and development in the Arab
world. Megerisi started his career in Tripoli, Libya with the Sadeq Institute
and various INGOs providing diverse research and democratisation
assistance to Libya’s post-revolutionary authorities between 2012-2014.