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TheNationalNews.com: Turkey cements Libyan intervention as Haftar vows to roll back ‘colonisers’

Posted by: Berhane Habtemariam

Date: Monday, 28 December 2020

A visit by the Turkish defence minister to Libya has renewed debate over Turkey’s interventionist policies in the region

 
Turkey’s Defence Minister Hulusi Akar, centre, and Turkey’s chief of staff, General Yasar Guler, left, greet Libyan and Turkish commanders commanders, in Tripoli, Libya, on Saturday, December, 26, 2020. AP Turkey’s Defence Minister Hulusi Akar, centre, and Turkey’s chief of staff, General Yasar Guler, left, greet Libyan and Turkish commanders commanders, in Tripoli, Libya, on Saturday, December, 26, 2020. AP

Turkey cemented its involvement in the Libyan conflict on Saturday when Defence Minister Hulusi Akar visited the North African country.

Four days earlier, the Turkish parliament voted to extend by 18 months a one-year deployment in the country that came into effect in January following a military agreement with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord.

The two rival administrations in east and west Libya reached a UN-brokered ceasefire in October, which calls for the departure of all foreign forces and mercenaries within three months.

Turkish media outlets framed the defence minister’s visit as a “surprise inspection” of Turkish forces.

Mr Akar’s apparently unscheduled visit could be seen as Ankara throwing down the gauntlet to the government in the east and its powerful backer, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

Mr Haftar vowed to push back the Turkish “colonisers” in a speech on Libya’s Independence Day, December 24.

On Sunday, Mr Akar said Mr Haftar’s forces would become legitimate targets if they attacked Turkish forces in the region.

‘Drive out the colonisers’

By intervening in Libya’s conflict, Turkey has expanded its footprint across the Arab world

It occupied much of northern Syria, which has a large ethnically Kurdish population, and Turkish armed forces have continued to stage raids against Kurdish separatist fighters in northern Iraq.

Since 2016, Turkey has established several military bases in the Kurdish Region of Iraq, causing tension with the Iraqi government in Baghdad.

Ankara continues to breach Libya’s borders to further its interests in the country, which has vast oil and gas resources beneath the Eastern Mediterranean and sits on Africa’s largest proven crude oil reserves.

Last year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a deal with the Tripoli-based government that demarcated each country’s maritime boundaries, with the aim of drilling in waters in the eastern Mediterranean and within Greek territorial waters. The move sparked a row that involved regional and international powers.

In return for access to these energy resources, Mr Erdogan wanted to tip the conflict in favour of the Tripoli government and its allied militias, providing them with troops, weaponry and paramilitary fighters, mainly comprising veteran rebel forces from Syria.

Backed by a regional alliance and local militias in eastern Libya, Mr Haftar is seen as a bastion against an Ottoman-style strongman who is acting, in the eyes of his critics, as a populist leader with a penchant for bellicose adventurism in foreign countries.

These perceptions are not helped by the names of ships in the Turkish flotilla sent to explore for oil and gas in disputed parts of the Mediterranean; Turkey’s seismic exploration ship, the Oruc Reis, is named after the Ottoman admiral popularly known as Barbarossa. The naval escort for the Oruc Reis is the Kemal Reis, named after a 15th century Ottoman admiral.

In a speech on Thursday to mark the 69th anniversary of Libyan independence, Mr Haftar said there would be “no peace in the presence of a coloniser on our land” and called on his forces to get ready.

“We will therefore take up arms again to fashion our peace with our own hands … and, since Turkey rejects peace and opts for war, prepare to drive out the occupier by faith, will and weapons,” he said.


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