Turkey shifts the focus of its foreign policy: from Syria to the eastern Mediterranean and Libya

Abstract

On 27 November 2019, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared that Turkey had concluded a treaty on military assistance and cooperation with the government of Fayez al-Sarraj in Libya. The agreement permits the deployment of Turkish troops into the civil-war-torn country. The announcement was met with almost unanimous criticism in Western Europe. The indignation grew even greater when it became known that Turkey was controlling and financing the smuggling of Islamic Syrian fighters into Libya. Reports of a dominant influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on the Libyan gov­ern­ment seemed to complete the picture of a strongly Islamist-motivated Turkish policy. However, Turkey's engagement in Libya is not driven by ideology, but rather by stra­tegic considerations and economic interests. Ankara is thus reacting to its isolation in the eastern Mediterranean, where the dispute over the distribution of gas resources is intensifying. At the same time, Turkey is drawing lessons from the war in Syria. An­kara has lost this war, but through its engagement in Syria, it has been able to estab­lish a conflictual - but viable - working relationship with Russia. The bottom line is that Turkey’s commitment to Libya is a shift in the focus of its foreign policy from the Middle East to the Mediterranean, a shift that will present entirely new challenges to Europe, the European Union (EU), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). (author's abstract)