Since 2014, Libya has been locked in a civil war between the warlord Khalifa Haftar, backed by the post-Ghaddafi legislature, and the Government of National Accord (GNA), led by the executive branch and dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and affiliated groups. Haftar enjoys the support of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia. Meanwhile, Ankara has been moving closer to the GNA, just recently concluding a military memorandum of understanding and announcing that it is willing to send troops to protect it. Soner Cagaptay and Ben Fishman note that these moves come at a time when Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has strained his relations with many countries in region:
Turkey has recently found itself pitted against an emerging coalition of old and new adversaries across the eastern Mediterranean, mainly Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, and Israel. Given its cool-to-hostile relations with these states, Ankara is alarmed by the rate at which they have come together in strategic cooperation, including joint diplomatic, energy, and military initiatives.
Soon after coming to power, for example, Egypt’s President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi opened talks with Greece to delineate their maritime economic areas. He then held a three-way summit in November 2014 to promote a deal for supplying natural gas to Egypt from undersea fields off the coast of Cyprus. Cairo also hosted the inaugural meeting of the East Mediterranean Gas Forum earlier this year, notably excluding Turkey.
Ankara’s [recent] maritime agreement with Tripoli was forged in part to counter such cooperation. Their November 28 accord established a virtual maritime axis between [the port of] Dalaman on Turkey’s southwest coast and [that of] Darnah on Libya’s northeast coast (far from the GNA’s practical area of control). In Erdogan’s view, drawing this line will allow him to cut into the emerging Cypriot-Egyptian-Greek-Israeli maritime bloc, while simultaneously pushing back against Egypt and the UAE’s pressure on the GNA.
Read more on Washington Institute for Near East Policy: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/turkey-pivots-to-tripoli-implications-for-libyas-civil-war-and-u.s.-policy