One major effect of the war in Gaza was to accelerate a rapprochement between rival regional hegemons Turkey and Egypt, both Sunni Muslim powerhouses, after more than a decade of hostility triggered by the Arab uprisings in 2011. As the relationship was restored, both parties made clear that a priority area of renewed cooperation would be to stabilize Libya. Beyond the rhetoric, what are the implications of the thaw between Turkey and Egypt for the frozen conflict in Libya?
Transactional impulses
Normalization between the two Mediterranean powers emerged at a depressing milestone for the region. The military regime in Egypt and the Islamist-leaning democracy in Turkey had been on opposite sides during the Arab Spring in late 2010 and 2011. But by 2019, it became clear that the revolutionary wave had been decisively snuffed out. Mohamed Morsi, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader deposed by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, had died in prison in June, while the democratically elected ruler of Tunisia, where it all began, was sworn in as president in October and “used the law” to cement his authoritarian rule.
Ankara and Cairo were also eager for revived trade and investment flows, with both economies battered by high inflation. Talks began, diplomatic relations were reestablished, and confidence-building measures were performed. But it was not until February 2024 that the entente seemed to culminate, as Sisi met Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at Cairo’s airport—and Turkey’s president set foot on Egyptian soil for the first time since 2012. Just as the visit from the fiercely pro-Palestinian Erdoğan boosted Sisi’s solidarity credentials, it gave Turkey’s president access to the front row of the Gaza war—and a channel for Turkish influence to shape its settlement and to secure reconstruction contracts.
At a joint press conference, the Egyptian president said that the aim was to raise trade volume with Turkey to $15 billion over the coming few years. And only days before the visit, Turkey announced the jewel in the crown of the rejuvenated friendship: It would supply Egypt with its famous Bayraktar drones—the lethality of which have been effectively showcased in Syria, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and Libya. “Normalization in our relations is important for Egypt to have certain technologies,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hasan Fikan explained, underscoring the transactional impulses driving the reconciliation.
Flashpoints flicker
However, while some flashpoints behind the decade-long rift have burned out, others are still flickering.
The 2021 lifting of the blockade of Qatar—Turkey’s ally—by its Gulf Cooperation Council neighbors, who underwrite Sisi’s regime, led to a full restoration of diplomatic relations. Similarly, differences softened regarding Syria. While Erdoğan backed a range of anti-Assad rebels for more than a decade, Sisi seemed unmoved by Assad’s massacres and even expressed support for Syria’s military. Despite President Bashar al-Assad’s crimes, Syria was readmitted to the Arab League in 2023. In July 2024, Turkey extended an invitation to Assad for talks to resume ties.
By contrast, the Eastern Mediterranean maritime border dispute is far from resolution. As Turkey and Greece have made overlapping claims to sea territories, involving controversial energy exploration in contested waters, Egypt has sided with Greece, going so far as to conclude a maritime border deal with Athens in 2020, after Turkey had signed its own provocative delimitation agreement with Libya the year before. For Turkey—and Greece for that matter—the row is as much about questions of identity and national sovereignty as it is about prospecting for oil. As such, compromise will be hard to come by.
Egypt and Turkey are also opposing stakeholders in the Libya conflict; in 2019-2020, they backed competing factions in a bitter war. As the eastern warlord, General Khalifa Haftar, laid siege to the capital, Tripoli, where the internationally recognized government was ensconced, Egypt was one of his main champions, alongside Russia and the United Arab Emirates. Cairo extended full military, intelligence, and logistics support to Haftar, who tightly rules areas of southern and eastern Libya abutting Egypt’s land border. In its distress, the government in Tripoli mobilized deep historical ties to Turkey, calling upon Erdoğan for military aid.
Grasping the opportunity to project power in North Africa and to pursue contracts with an energy giant, Ankara responded, signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on security assistance in November 2019. Turkey quickly deployed high-ranking military personnel and trainers, combat drones, air defense systems, tactical missiles, electronic warfare systems, and a fighting force of thousands of mercenaries recruited from Syria. No doubt, the Turkish intervention was decisive in beating back Haftar’s forces and in achieving a ceasefire in October 2020—which largely held, as Turkey deepened its military hold over western Libya throughout the subsequent deadlock.
Indeed, Erdoğan’s Cairo visit in early September 2024 was branded a hopeful moment for Libya, with the Turkish foreign minister going on to promise that Ankara and Cairo would work more closely on the file. But Turkey’s sustained, ongoing effort to institutionalize its security relationship with the authorities in Tripoli—essentially, to bed down in Libya—is one among several developments that put pressure on the rapprochement.
Hot summer
On August 12, the clauses of an MoU between Turkey and Prime Minister Abdel Hamid Dbeibeh’s government in Tripoli were made public, as Erdoğan submitted it to the Turkish parliament for approval. Positioned as the outcome of a request from Libya to restructure its security sector, the MoU confers legal immunity and full autonomy upon Turkish military personnel, provides for sizable logistical and financial support from the Libyan treasury for Turkey’s activities, and allows Turkish forces unrestricted access to Libyan territory, airspace, and territorial waters. Just as some Libyan analysts describe the agreement as “turn[ing] Libya into a military base for Turkey,” it also can be assumed that eyebrows have been raised in Cairo, which ultimately wants Turkish forces out of Libya.
Only a day before the MoU was publicized, Egypt revealed its own provocative decision in Cairo: Its prime minister received Osama Hamad, the head of the parallel eastern government of Libya, which is under Haftar’s control. This was interpreted as a direct challenge to Dbeibeh’s authority, who promptly ordered the expulsion of two Egyptian diplomats from Tripoli.
This escalation came amid a deterioration of the Libyan security environment throughout the summer. In mid-July, clashes between armed militia in Tajoura, a suburb of Tripoli, left a woman dead, and then on August 9, further clashes killed nine people and wounded sixteen. Around the same time, Haftar mobilized military reinforcements toward southwest Libya, troubling neighboring Algeria, concerning the United Nations, and prompting military leaders allied with Dbeibeh’s government to order the return of all soldiers to their barracks and to raise their level of readiness. Haftar’s son, Saddam, who is being groomed to lead his father’s military machinery, also sent his forces southwest to blockade production at Libya’s largest oil field—partially operated by Repsol—as part of a bizarre spat with Spain involving an arrest warrant and a visit to Italy.
These military movements, which represent the most significant risk yet to the 2020 ceasefire, occur alongside a significant institutional power grab. The IT director of the Central Bank of Libya (CBL), which handles Libya’s vast oil revenues, was kidnapped outside his home on August 18; the following day, the powerful governor of the CBL, Sadiq al-Kabir, was sacked by one of the governing bodies in Tripoli. The legality of the dismissal was unclear, but it underscored Dbeibeh’s determination to oust his former ally, who had begun gravitating toward the eastern camp and accusing Dbeibeh of mismanagement. Kabir and senior bank staff fled the country.
Changed game?
Certainly, while the main fault lines in Libya correspond to an east-west divide, the essence of the conflict is economic. The quarrel between the two authorities has been depicted varyingly as a battle between secularism and rabid Islamism, or between the new Qadhafism and democracy. Yet the fundamental dynamic is around elite capture. The rivalry between ruling clans—increasingly associated with the Dbeibeh and Haftar families—is for access to the country’s finances and resources, licit and otherwise. In fact, Haftar’s military buildup may well turn out to be a means for increasing his leverage in the backroom deals that divide Libya’s institutions between its key powerbrokers.
This reality changes the equation for Turkey, or at least makes the calculation different than in 2019.
While embedding itself in western Libya’s security sector, Turkey has forged strong economic ties with eastern Libya, which has been awash with cash in recent years and is undergoing a construction bonanza. For example, in July, the Turkish steel producer Tosyali announced it would build the world’s largest iron and steel production plant in the world in Benghazi. The Turkish foreign minister also met openly with Belkacem Haftar, third son of the general, who heads the newly established Libyan Development and Reconstruction Fund, an opaque but flush vehicle established in the aftermath of the Derna flooding disaster. Many of the key entities and individuals greasing the wheels of the Haftar family’s corrupt empire, from the money launderers to the upstart energy broker known as “BGN,” are based in or have strong links with Istanbul. This growing financial partnership means it’s not predestined that Turkey would once more extend carte blanche military support to the government in Tripoli, whose mandate expired in 2021. Egypt, too, has advanced its own relations across the aisle, reopening its embassy in Tripoli in 2021. Crucially, there’s also the Russia factor.
Haftar’s “ride or die” ally is not Sisi—but Putin. Haftar’s assault on Tripoli in 2019 would have been unthinkable without support from the Kremlin and the Wagner Group, in the form of target spotting, sniping, directing artillery fire, disinformation, and flying war planes. Libya remains central to Putin’s conception of Libya as a bridge with its Mediterranean operations in Syria and as a platform for sanctions busting and supplying the Wagner Group forces fanning out across sub-Saharan Africa. The parameters of the pact are continually expanding, with the Kremlin planning for a naval base at Tobruk and to supply Haftar with air defence systems, while consolidating its presence across multiple military bases in Libya. Egypt is a significant force in shaping tribal undercurrents in eastern Libya, with which it shares a 1,000 kilometer land border. Ultimately, however, Haftar makes his decisions with Moscow.
Consequently, Turkish relations with Russia become more relevant for Libya than the rapprochement with Egypt, and the cards here have been reshuffled by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A war now between Russia’s Libyan proxy and forces closely aligned with the Turkish military would bear significant implications for NATO and threaten to spread the conflagration in Europe to the shores of the Mediterranean. It is likely, therefore, that Haftar would only make another move on Tripoli after consultations and accommodations were made with Turkey. However, as the sands in Libya rapidly shift, and a multiplicity of militia mobilize to protect their criminal empires, there is plenty of scope for local actors to upend the best laid plans of regional hegemons and to unleash further disaster.
About the author
Alia Brahimi is a nonresident senior fellow within the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and the writer and host of the Guns for Hire podcast.
This piece is part of a collection of essays, edited by the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Program and the Institute for International Political Studies.