One-time foes Egypt and Turkey race to solve Libya’s new crisis

Egypt and Turkey are using their new-found friendship to try and resolve a power struggle in OPEC-member Libya, which is threatening to boil over into a civil war.

After taking opposite sides in a previous Libyan conflict five years ago, Cairo and Ankara are pressing the North African country’s two competing governments to reach a deal that would help end a crippling oil blockade, according to officials and diplomats following the issue, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.

Turkey has also held talks with Libyan military leader Khalifa Haftar — a long-time Egyptian ally and Ankara’s sworn enemy in the 2019-2020 war. The breakaway eastern parliament Haftar backs is at loggerheads with the United Nations-recognized Tripoli administration run by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, in a dispute over who should run the central bank that effectively controls the nation’s vast oil wealth.

While there’s no illusion about the scale of the challenge — and Egypt and Turkey are only some of the foreign powers with sway in Libya — their joint influence has significantly reduced fears of full-blown war, according to diplomats. Three Libyan officials with knowledge of political decisions agreed the improved relationship would greatly reduce the chances of another conflict in the short term.

Turkey’s defense and foreign ministries declined to comment. Egypt’s foreign ministry couldn’t be reached for comment.

The push to tackle Libya’s split is just one of the recent common grounds for Turkey and Egypt, which had been at odds for much of the past decade over Turkish support for political Islam. They’ve adopted a shared stance against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and found their interests align on the civil war in Sudan and an increasingly unstable relationship between Somalia and its neighbor, Ethiopia.

The “challenges confronting our region and world today demonstrably confirm the imperative of close coordination and cooperation,” Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said earlier this month on his first visit to Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan since becoming leader of North Africa’s biggest economy in 2014.

Relations between the two countries soured after the 2013 ouster of Egypt’s Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, by the army, a move Erdogan harshly criticized for years. A thaw began in 2021, leading to a landmark El-Sisi-Erdogan handshake at the 2022 soccer World Cup.

Extended impasse

United Nations-led talks aimed at resolving the Libyan feud have yet to bear fruit. The crisis erupted in mid-August, when the Tripoli government fired long-standing Central Bank Governor Sadiq Al-Kabir, who is responsible for managing the revenue from more than 1 million barrels of crude a day.

The eastern administration — which had forged ties with Al-Kabir — responded by suspending the production and export of Libyan oil, roiling energy markets by cutting supplies that mainly go to southern Europe.

Signs of the Egypt-Turkey rapprochement are apparent in Libya itself. More Egyptian companies and workers are returning to Tripoli and other parts of the west typically under the control of Turkey’s local allies. Meanwhile, Turkish firms are poised to take part in reconstruction projects in the Egypt-allied east, including around the city of Derna where devastating floods killed thousands a year ago.

It’s a far cry from 2019, when Haftar’s Libyan National Army marched on Tripoli in an effort to unseat a Turkish-backed government. More than 2,000 people — mainly combatants — are estimated to have been killed in months of fighting, in which Haftar also had the support of Russia and the United Arab Emirates. The UN brokered a peace deal in late 2020, though attempts to reunify the country under Dbeibah have faltered and promised elections haven’t happened.

Sudan, Somalia

Across Egypt’s southern border, Sudan — where a civil war has raged for 17 months — is another area where interests may be converging. Both Cairo and Ankara have hosted Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, Sudan’s military leader, on official visits since the conflict erupted. That honor hasn’t been extended to opponent Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the chief of the paramilitary force battling for control of Africa’s third-largest country.

In Somalia, both countries have expanded their military footprints. Turkey has its largest overseas base in the Horn of Africa nation, and has held talks about setting up a site to test-fire missiles and space rockets.

Egypt has begun supplying weapons to Somalia’s army and plans to train soldiers, according to the Somali foreign minister, amid soaring tensions with neighbor Ethiopia over the breakaway region of Somaliland. Egypt has its own long-running dispute with Addis Ababa related to the building of a giant Nile dam, which Cairo fears may affect its downstream water flow.

For Erdogan, improving ties with Egypt is part of a broader plan to repair relations with Arab powers and boost the Turkish economy through more investment and exports. Turkey has mended relations with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in the past two years.

“The Sudanese civil war, the disputes between Egypt and Ethiopia, and the increased risk of military and political conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia are structural dynamics that strategically affect Turkey-Egypt relations,” Murat Yesiltas, security policy director of the Ankara-based SETA think tank, which advises Erdogan’s government, said in an article this month.

“Cooperation between Ankara and Cairo stands out as a strategic necessity.”

Follow Moneyweb’s in-depth finance and business news on WhatsApp here.