ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held talks with Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Al-Sarraj in Istanbul on Sunday, just days after the Turkish leader said he was ready to send troops into Libya if requested by Tripoli.
The closed-door meeting, which was not on Erdogan’s official agenda, took place in Istanbul’s Ottoman-era Dolmabahce Palace, the Turkish presidency said without giving details.
Last Tuesday, Erdogan said he was ready to send troops to Libya if requested by the government in Tripoli.
"On the issue of sending soldiers... If Libya makes such a request from us, we can send our personnel there, especially after striking the military security agreement," he said in a televised appearance, referring to a deal signed last month with Libya's Government of National Accord, led by Prime Minister Fayez Al-Sarraj.
During the previous meeting between the two men, in Istanbul on November 27, the two countries agreed a deal on security and military cooperation, as well as maritime jurisdiction.
The deal came despite calls from the Arab League — which includes Libya — to end cooperation with Turkey in protest at its military offensive against Kurdish forces in Syria.
Libya has been mired in chaos since a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
Late on Saturday when a bilateral deal that provides for a quick reaction force if requested by Tripoli was sent to the Turkish parliament.
Ankara’s latest move raises tensions in the Mediterranean region and risks confrontation with forces led by Khalifa Haftar based in eastern Libya, where rival political factions have been based since 2014.
Late last month, Ankara and Tripoli signed an expanded security and military accord and, separately, a memorandum on maritime boundaries that Greece said violates international law.
While the maritime accord has been sent to the United Nations for approval, the military deal has been presented to Turkey’s parliament. “Parliament will enter it into force after approval,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Sunday.
It was unclear when a vote would take place in the parliament controlled by Erdogan’s ruling AK Party (AKP) and its nationalist MHP allies.
On Thursday, Haftar urged his forces to advance toward the center of Tripoli in what he said would be a “final battle,” after an offensive against the government that began in April but has stalled outside the capital.
Athens, which expelled the Libyan ambassador over the maritime boundary pact, has condemned the maritime accord and warned that Ankara is escalating tensions in the region.
“Turkey must choose if it will follow the road of self-isolation, continuing to play the role of trouble-maker in the region, or behaving like a good neighbor henceforth,” Greece’s deputy foreign minister, Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, told Sunday’s Ethnos newspaper.
Greece has also condemned new Turkish gas exploration off the coast of the divided island of Cyprus.
On Sunday, Israel’s energy ministry told Reuters that a Turkish vessel had asked one of its research ships to leave an area where it was “legally located in Cyprus’s commercial waters.” Israeli and Turkish media said Turkey’s navy escorted the ship away in the incident, which ocurred two weeks ago.
According to the text of the military agreement sent to Turkish lawmakers, Tripoli could request vehicles, equipment and weapons for use in army, navy and air operations. It also provisions for new intelligence sharing.
Utku Cakirozer, lawmaker from Turkey’s main opposition CHP and a member of the NATO parliamentary assembly, said it was “worrying” that Erdogan raised the prospect of sending troops and taking sides in the Libyan conflict.
“Turkey should not enter into a new adventure,” he told Reuters. “The AKP government should immediately stop being a party to the war in Libya.”
