Turkish Erdogan’s oil war in Libya

This 21 December 2019 video says about itself:

Maritime disputes spur civil war in Libya

In this episode of Mapping Faultlines, we look at the escalating crisis in Libya where warlord Khalifa Haftar is making a push towards Tripoli yet again. Meanwhile, the GNA [Tripoli] government has signed an agreement with Turkey, which enables the latter to lay claim on part of the Mediterranean Sea. The competition between Turkey and countries such as Egypt, Israel and Greece has added further complexity to the conflict in Libya.

As United States President Donald Trump bombs oil-rich Iraq, Syria and Somalia, and sends more United States soldiers to Iraq … Trump’s Turkish NATO ally Erdogan wants to send Turkish soldiers to the bloody war in Libya; already a proxy oil war between President Macron and Total oil corporation of France on the one hand, and the government of Italy (like Turkey, former colonial power in Libya) and Italian oil corporation Eni on the other hand.

From daily News Line in Britain, 31 December 2019:

TURKISH Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, whose country is preparing for troop deployment to Libya, says the prolongation of the Libyan conflict could plunge the North African country into ‘chaos’ and turn it into another Syria.

Dear Mr Mevlut Cavusoglu: Libya is basically like Syria ever since your NATO started its war in 2011; in some aspects, live the slave markets, even worse than Syria.

The accords – one on security and military cooperation and another on maritime boundaries in the eastern Mediterranean – were inked on November 27 and granted Ankara the right to deploy troops to Libya if asked by Tripoli.

Last Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara had received that request and that the Turkish parliament would soon authorise the dispatch of troops to Libya.

Erdogan said the Turkish parliament will soon pass a bill to send military forces to Libya as Tripoli has offered an ‘invitation’ for the deployment. …

Libya was wrecked by chaos in 2011, when an Islamist uprising backed by a NATO military intervention, using airpower, led to the overthrow and murder of long-time leader Muammar Gadaffi by Islamist fighters, after Gadaffi’s convoy was attacked by NATO aircraft. …

On November 27, Turkey and Libya signed the maritime accord which marks the boundary between the two countries in the energy-rich eastern Mediterranean close to the Greek island of Crete. …

Also last Thursday, Libya’s Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha said at a press conference in Tunis that a Turkish-Tunisian-Algerian alliance had been formed to support the Libyan [Tripoli] government.

The Tunisian Presidency, however, dismissed joining the alliance and insisted that the country wanted to preserve its neutral stance on the Libya crisis without taking part in any coalitions.

‘Rachida Ennaifer, designated Media in-Charge at the Tunisian Presidency, denies the press conference statement by Fathi Bashagha on Tunisia joining an alliance with Libya, Turkey and Algeria. She said the statement does not reflect the position of Tunisia’, the Libyan News Observatory tweeted.

Turkey’s Libya intervention escalates a dangerous power struggle: here.

The nine-year civil war between rival militias unleashed by NATO’s destruction of the Libyan regime in its 2011 war threatens to escalate into all-out war between major regional powers. As the Turkish parliament voted yesterday to authorize a military intervention to back Fayez el-Sarraj’s Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, key backers of Khalifa Haftar’s rival Libyan National Army (LNA) were denouncing the vote as illegal and threatening to intervene. After a call with French President Emmanuel Macron on December 30, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi issued a communiqué denouncing the Turkey-GNA accords as “illegal foreign intervention” in Libya: here.

Neo-Ottomanism: the political economy of contemporary Turkey. Turkish communist leader KEMAL OKUYAN explains the background to the despatch of Turkish troops to Libya and Turkey’s new claims to mineral resources in the eastern Mediterranean: here.