Turkey again blocks EU monitoring of Libya arms embargo
Turkey is again preventing the EU from monitoring the UN arms embargo on Libya. The Turkish foreign ministry in February vetoed the search of two vessels suspected of carrying arms to the Maghreb country.
Another recent incident took place in November when the German navy was in the midst of searching a container ship and Turkey forced a halt, accusing the German government and the EU bloc of illegal behaviour.
The EU established the observer mission in May 2020 with the aim of stabilising Libya, a country devastated first by the war against Gaddafi and then by civil war, and supporting the UN-led peace process aimed at unifying the country.
Since 2014, Libya has suffered from institutional duplicity with two governments, one based in Tripoli and led by Prime Minister Fayed Sarraj and the other based in the east of the country, under the patronage of Marshal Khalifa Haftar.
Ankara has wholeheartedly supported the Tripoli government, including by sending military personnel, but it has not been the only country to take sides. Qatar has also been one of Sarraj's main supporters. On the other side, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and France were more supportive of Haftar.
Dialogue continues in Geneva between the warring parties in the framework of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum, which concluded with the creation of a transitional government in charge of organising the elections on 24 December. The winning list defeated the favourite, led by the Speaker of the Tobruk House of Representatives, Aguila Saleh.
The transitional government includes representatives from the warring regions and is headed by diplomat Mohammad Younes al-Menfi, who in addition to guaranteeing free elections is tasked with ensuring the withdrawal of foreign mercenaries from Libyan territory, a key point of the ceasefire agreement of last October.
Although the process is on track, it is essential to prevent any small factor, however small, from breaking it. For this reason, preventing Turkey from continuing to intervene in the country in one way or another is a key element in bringing the transition to a successful conclusion.
To this end, German authorities announced on Wednesday that they will send a new ship to the Mediterranean Sea at the end of the week to join the EU's Irini mission and continue monitoring compliance with the UN embargo.
Turkey has never shied away from a bellicose tone, calling Haftar a 'war criminal and murderer' at the end of the year and warning that it would respond to any attack on its troops stationed in Libya. "If any attack is carried out against Turkish forces, we consider Haftar's forces anywhere to be a legitimate target. They will have nowhere to run," warned Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar.
Akar also described the EU mission as "biased, unfair and of dubious legality", something which in his opinion "cannot be accepted", and accused the EU bloc of only controlling the maritime routes by which material reaches Tripoli, but not the air routes by which weapons reach Haftar.
