Turkish Governement Sinks into a British-Controlled Swamp in Libya

Turkish Governement Sinks  into a British-Controlled Swamp in Libya 

At the end of 2019, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Tripoli-based Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA),which provides for enhanced security cooperation between the two governments. It subsequently led to a motion in the Turkish parliament to authorize Erdogan to send troops and military equipment to the GNA if requested. Such a move is in clear violation of the UN arms embargo. The GNA, which does not control much more than the city of Tripoli and its suburbs, is supported by Qatar and by a Libyan affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt designated as a terrorist organization in 2013, and which is effectively controlled from London. Most of Libya is controlled by the Libyan National Army (LNA), led by Gen. Khalifa Haftar, and by the Libyan Parliament, which decamped from Tripoli and is now based in Benghazi under the protection of the LNA. The latter is now laying siege to Tripoli, which Gen. Haftar has pledged to capture. Although the GNA is the internationally recognized government, Haftar and the interim government are recognized as a legitimate opposition by Russia, France, Egypt, the Trump Administration and the UN, with which a negotiated settlement should be reached. While Erdogan has not made the final decision to send Turkish troops, media reports claim that Turkish arms and ammunition have been airlifted into Tripoli and that the Sultan Murad Divison, the Turkmen mercenaries whom Turkey has been supporting in Syria against the Assad government, has also been airlifted to Libya. According to journalist Mehmet A. Kancı, writing in the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency on Dec. 24, this operation is part of Erdogan’s new geopolitical strategy of building a “defense area”. It extends from the west and south of the Greek island of Crete in the west to Qatar in the east, where Turkey maintains the headquarters of the Turkey-Qatar Combined Joint Force Command overlooking the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, and then down to Somalia where the Somali Turkish Task Force Command is based in Mogadishu, on the Indian Ocean. A new link in the area is now Libya where Turkey aims to build a military base . However, this self-proclaimed “defense area” has exposed Turkey to attack. On Dec. 28, a car bombing in Mogadishu claimed by the Somali terror group Al Shabaab, targeted Turkish interests, and  killed 90 people. Earlier in the month, the Eritrean government accused  Ankara and Doha of backing attempts to destabilize the recently-restored relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which have now engaged a policy of economic cooperation. The leader of Turkey’s main opposition party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the People’s Republic Party, warned the government not to intervene in Syria at the time, and now in Libya, as sinking into a “swamp” of terrorism and proxy wars. This is a warning that has already come true.