Here is a basic fact about contracts. Two parties can agree to more or less anything between themselves, but they cannot agree to give away something that belongs to a third party. Imagine you and I sign a memo saying the boundary between our gardens runs through the middle of my neighbour’s swimming pool. We can sign it, notarise it and frame it. The neighbour will still not be impressed.
That is roughly the dispute in the eastern Mediterranean, except that the swimming pool may hold gas and everyone involved has a navy. On Tuesday, as Al Jazeera’s Nils Adler reports, Libya’s eastern-based House of Representatives voted unanimously to approve a 2019 memorandum of understanding with Turkey that draws a sea border between the two countries. In 2020 the same parliament had rejected it. According to EU Alive, the vote also cancelled the 2020 resolutions that had cut political ties with Ankara.
Some history. The memorandum was signed in Istanbul on November 27, 2019, by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fayez al-Sarraj, then prime minister of the UN-recognised government in Tripoli. Within weeks Turkey had sent drones and military advisers to help Tripoli fight off Khalifa Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army, which was trying to take the capital. So the price was fairly clear. Turkey got a claim to large and possibly gas-rich stretches of sea, and Tripoli got drones. The eastern parliament, which backs Haftar, was on the side being shot at by those drones, so its rejection in 2020 was not hard to understand.
What changed? Ankara spent years courting the east. In July it reached a deal with Haftar’s LNA, and Al Jazeera reported at the time that this involved agreements to develop military facilities and advanced surveillance systems, plus training in Turkey for eastern Libyan officers, with specialised Turkish defence companies taking part. Then on October 6 the parliament elected Al-Salhin Abdelnabi al-Obeidi as speaker, replacing Aguila Saleh after more than 12 years. Al-Obeidi used to chair the Libyan-Turkish parliamentary friendship committee. If you want a contract approved, it helps when the person running the approval process used to run the other side’s fan club.
Anas El Gomati, director of the Sadeq Institute, a Libyan think tank, told Al Jazeera that the reversal is really about a US mediation plan that could put Saddam Haftar, Khalifa’s son and deputy commander, on a route to the presidency. “Turkiye is now the most consequential outside power in Libya with leverage over Tripoli and a military presence in the west, and he needs it to get there and to stay there,” he said. Then he gave the part I find most interesting:
“But a ratified treaty is hard to reverse, so Ankara gets something that looks permanent in return for support that, depending on how the Haftars use it, may not be.”
That is a very good trade for Turkey if it works. Ankara pays with things that can be switched off later, like political backing, training and surveillance kit. In return it gets something that is meant to last indefinitely: a boundary approved by both of Libya’s rival centres of power. Tripoli’s Government of National Unity welcomed the vote. So Libya’s two governments have now agreed on something, and El Gomati is quick to say what that something is not: “It’s about who controls the budget, the army and the electoral commission, and this vote touches none of them.” Libya’s rival governments managed to unite on handing out sea, which costs neither of them any money.
The neighbours
The third parties are not impressed. Greece says the deal ignores Greek islands, including Crete, Rhodes and Karpathos, and so takes its maritime territory. Athens also argues that Turkey and Libya do not have the opposite or adjacent coastlines that would justify a shared boundary in the first place, Greek City Times reported. Greece briefed the UN Security Council, and its foreign minister said the memorandum remains invalid. European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen issued a joint statement saying it infringes on the sovereign rights of third states, does not comply with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and is “null and void”. They also restated the EU’s solidarity with Greece and Cyprus. On Wednesday the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, told all countries to respect member states’ sovereign rights under EU and international law, UNCLOS included. Israel condemned the vote too.
The catch is that Turkey has never signed UNCLOS, so the treaty’s rules on maritime boundaries do not bind it. Turkey’s foreign ministry says the memorandum protects both countries’ rights under international law and “the principle of equity”. Equity is a useful word to have if the rulebook everyone else follows gives a lot of weight to islands that sit just off your coast and belong to someone else. “There are countries reacting to this. We know why they are reacting,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told state media. “However, this is an entirely legitimate deal, both from a legal and a statutory perspective.”
Egypt’s position is less straightforward. Its foreign ministry said the agreement “constitutes a clear infringement upon Egypt’s sovereign rights within its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf” and that its ratification “carries no legal consequences for Egypt,” according to The New Arab. Cairo also reaffirmed its own maritime agreement with Greece. But President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, once one of Haftar’s strongest backers, has reportedly cooled on him. AFP reported that experts link this to Haftar allowing his territory to be used to send support to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces. Egypt is also now a close security ally of Ankara, and in July it did not object to a maritime line drawn between Benghazi and Turkey. Wolfgang Pusztai, a security analyst and former Austrian defence attache in Greece, thinks the sea is not really Cairo’s main worry. A possible Turkish military presence in eastern Libya is “probably more of a concern for Egypt,” he said. “I doubt Cairo would accept this.”
What happens at sea
Athens says it will take all appropriate measures to protect its sovereign rights. El Gomati says implementation now depends on bodies such as Libya’s National Oil Corporation, and he expects the pressure on them to be “diplomatic and slow”. Pusztai is less relaxed. He puts the risk of naval incidents at “very high” if Turkey or Libya act on the deal at sea, and says the EU naval mission that has enforced the UN arms embargo on Libya since 2020 could get pulled in. There is a precedent. In August 2020, months after the deal was signed, Turkey sent the survey vessel Oruc Reis to look for oil and gas in waters Greece claims, and the two NATO allies came close to a military confrontation.
So the memorandum is either “entirely legitimate” or “null and void”, depending on who you ask. The last time that question came up, the first serious answer came from a survey ship.