One thing is for sure, a simple look at the objectives of the Turkish military intervention in Libya is enough to get an idea of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s vision of expanding and bringing back his ancestral past. The statements of the Turkish Defense Minister, Hulusi Akar, speak for themselves: “Libya is our neighbor by sea. It is unbelievable that we remain neutral, when there are countries that are not, such as the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.”
The Turkish Defense Minister said that the question as to why the Turkish army is there “makes no sense.”
These statements are downright devoid of political sense and testify to a lack of familiarity with the simplest rules of contemporary international relations. Whatever the naivety of the justifications offered by the Minister of Defense of a regional country the size of Turkey, these arguments relate to the defense of the objectives of Sultan Erdogan.
Whether by ignorance or on purpose, Akar ignored the fact that Libya is an Arab country with strong ties to active Arab powers such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
There is also talk of institutional organizational ties through membership in the Arab League and the collective agreement among its members. Then there is also the deep geostrategic and historical relationship between Egypt and Libya, not only in terms of land borders that exceed 1,000 square kilometers, but also in terms of the organic link between Egyptian national security and the situation in neighboring Libya.
The Turkish minister speaks of a “maritime neighborhood” between Turkey and Libya that gives his country the right to intervene militarily in that Arab country. Yet the seas and oceans are shared by dozens of coastal states. Its absurd logic has nothing to do with the principles of international law and the right of sovereignty, which have become a stable matter for the Member States of the UN since its foundation.
With this declaration, the Turkish Defense Minister is redefining things that are already well established in international law. He is losing interest in the idea of a neighborhood based on geography in favor of a neighborhood based on invented hypotheses.
Another thing, however, is that Turkey revealed its true intentions when it decided to activate the illegal deal concluded with the Al-Sarraj government and to begin exploring for natural gas’ as soon as possible,’ according to President Erdogan’s words. Erdogan revealed Turkey’s ambitions in Libya, which range from gas from the Eastern Mediterranean and even Libyan energy resources to a vital objective such as going against Turkey’s strategic adversaries such as Egypt and Greece, while making the most of the card of illegal immigration from the Libyan coast. This situation affects the security and stability of Europe, why Turkey keeps putting pressure on Europeans on this issue.
There is no doubt that one of the secrets of Turkey’s mobilization on the Libyan issue is that it has placed all its bets on the natural gas fields in the Mediterranean in the basket of the government of Fayez al-Sarraj.
We therefore feel that Erdogan risks becoming involved in Libya and exacerbating his country’s isolation at regional and international level as a result of his imprudent policy. Even before the Berlin conference, he said that Turkey will remain in Libya until its rights are recognized in the Mediterranean, and that Turkey is determined to use all political, diplomatic and military forces in the Syrian, Mediterranean and Libyan issues.
It must be acknowledged that Erdogan’s policy is a source of regional and international confusion. His interference in countries such as Syria and Libya is indicative of his evil intentions and his open desire to revive historical hatred and tension between peoples and to defend an extremist ideology defeated by the will of the peoples of the region. In so doing, he is abandoning the foundations of Turkish foreign policy.
Turkey has opened the door to a new role in the Arab and Islamic context thanks to the “zero problems” policy launched by Davutoglu. He broke away from the Justice and Development Party and created a rival party after Erdogan, since 2011, deviated from the foreign policy principles on which the party was based, after his blatant bias towards the terrorist agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and his support for the chaos and unrest caused by this group in many Arab countries.
