Abstract:

After the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya plunged into a civil war. Two main competing governments emerged for control over Libya: Tobruk based Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Marshal Khalifa Haftar and Tripoli based Government of National Accord (GNA) led by the Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj. This civil war invited other countries’ involvement such as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), France, Russia, and Turkey. Khalifa Haftar’s offensive, which started in April 2019, to capture Tripoli intensified the conflict. Fighting already in opposite sides on the civil war in Syria, Russia and Turkey also backed opposite sides of the civil war in Libya. Russia covertly provides assistance to Haftar’s army by conducting its operations in Libya under the private military group Wagner owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman affiliated with Vladimir Putin. This indicates Russia’s efforts to hide its support to Khalifa Haftar to maintain its role as a peace broker in the civil war. Turkey openly supports al-Sarraj government by sending military advisors and involving directly in the conflict with its deployment of Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV). Turkey, therefore, has a clear position in Libya. It signed a military cooperation with al-Sarraj government, which allows Turkey to send its military at the GNA’s request. Moreover, it signed a maritime agreement with the GNA, which determined the exclusive economic zones of two countries in the Eastern Mediterranean. Thus, it closed any possibility of compromising with Khalifa Haftar, to whom it condemned as a vicious war lord. In this context, the security and energy dimensions of Russian and Turkish involvement will be mentioned. This paper tries to analyze Russian and Turkish positions in Libya, discussing the reasons why Russia and Turkey interfered in the civil war in Libya and offered their support to different parties.

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