Turkey’s Libya gambit raises stakes in eastern Mediterranean

Few Turks — and even fewer non-Turks — are aware of Libya's historical significance for Turkey. Yet recent developments have shifted international attention to the eastern Mediterranean as a new zone of conflict. Specifically, Turkey and Libya's agreement, signed Nov. 27, to determine maritime borders, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's statement that he would send Turkish troops to Libya if the Tripoli-based government requested as much.

Libya was once called Ottoman Tripolitania, from 1551 to 1864 under the Ottoman Empire — the empire's last African possession. Italy had designs on the Ottoman province and attempted to invade it. The founder-to-be of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal, was dispatched by the Committee of Union of Progress to Tripolitania in 1908 on a mission to build support for the "motherland." In 1911, he served as a volunteer in the eastern part of the province, Cyrenaica, to organize the armed resistance against the invading Italians. Libya played a formative role for the leaders and future founders of the Republic of Turkey, which replaced the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s.

Former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu emphasized the geopolitical importance of Libya for Turkey. On more than one occasion, he has said that the distance between Libya and Turkey’s southwestern province of Antalya is shorter than that between Antalya and Istanbul. Davutoglu used to boast that while the colonial Western powers were interested in having a presence in the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey had, via its exclusive ties with Libya, extended its influence to the Western Mediterranean, giving Turkey an international standing on par with France.

Given the historical background between Turkey and Libya, one could possibly see nothing wrong with Ankara and Tripoli's recent agreement. But Turkey's prospective military commitment is escalating the struggle of interests in the eastern Mediterranean.