With 325 votes in favor and 184 against, the Turkish Parliament gave the green light to send troops to Libya to support the government of Fayez al-Sarrajrecognized by the United Nations. At the moment, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan does not seem intent on entering the war, as much as exerting pressure on General Khalifa Haftar - who has been trying to conquer Tripoli since April - to convince him to withdraw his troops.
In reality, the opposite is happening: in recent days, the military offensive by Haftar's forces has intensified, to the point of persuading Ankara to bring forward the Parliament's vote, initially planned for next week. The approved motion will allow Erdogan to send soldiers to Libya for a year.
THE REACTIONS
The Turkish move alarms Italy, who fears the rekindling of the civil war and continues to urge the sending of an EU diplomatic mission to the North African country. Immediately after the Ankara vote, too Brussels he reiterated his appeal to "stop all military actions" and to "resume political dialogue". Concern was also expressed by neighboring countries, Algeria ed Egypt, and from the Arab League, which opposes any foreign interference in the country.
ERDOGAN'S POLITICAL PROJECT
Turkish troops will concentrate in the western part of the country, with particular attention to Misrata, where a Turkish-speaking minority resides, the pretext used by Erdogan to justify the intervention "to protect our brothers". But the Sultan's real goal is another: to create a point of irradiation for political Islam in North Africa and further expand his area of influence (which already includes Syria and Somalia), giving space to the propaganda project that aims to recover the lost Ottoman grandeur.
THE ROLE OF RUSSIA
On the other side of the fence is the Russia, who also supports Haftar militarily. Recently, the arrival in Libya of Wagner's mercenaries – a company of Yevgheni Prigozhin, very close to Vladimir Putin – has considerably strengthened the ground actions conducted by the number one in Cyrenaica, who already outnumbered his opponents in the skies thanks to the support of fighters and of UAE drones.
THE POSSIBLE AGREEMENT BETWEEN RUSSIA AND Türkiye
At this point, Russia and Türkiye could decide to share Libya in areas of influence. Cyrenaica and Fezzan would return to Moscow's orbit – which also has Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and France on its side – while Tripolitania would end up in the Turkish sphere, with Misrata as the reference point. More will be known on January 8, when Putin will meet Erdogan in Sochi.
THE DANGERS FOR ITALY
In any case, it is already clear that an agreement between Moscow and Ankara would be a serious problem for Italy, which would be ousted by Turkey in a decisive area on several fronts. Right in Tripolitania are the Eni oil fields on which a large part of the Italian energy supply depends, not to mention of the coast from which thousands of migrants leave every year. The prospect that all of this will end up in Erdogan's hands is not at all reassuring, also because in the past the Turkish president himself proved to be very capable of negotiating with Europe the control of migrations from the Middle East in exchange for six billion euros.
