Six years ago, Turkey helped Khalifa Haftar’s rivals repel his assault on Tripoli. Now, Ankara is sitting down with the Libyan military commander. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan travelled to Benghazi on Aug. 12 for talks with Haftar, his son Saddam, and senior eastern officials a day after meeting Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah and other officials in Tripoli.
The visit underscored Ankara’s evolving “One Libya” strategy, reflecting a shift beyond the east-west divide. While maintaining its foothold in the west through its military presence, political relationships, and commercial ties, Turkey is also building direct links with the eastern camp it once opposed. The outreach comes as other regional powers also expand contacts across Libya’s divide. Egypt stepped up engagement last month, with Egyptian intelligence chief Hassan Rashad meeting Saddam Haftar in Alamein on Aug. 22, three days after President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi met Haftar, amid growing calls to end Libya’s institutional split.
Fidan’s visits reflect Ankara’s effort to build ties with key political and security actors while backing Libya’s unity and military unification. His July 24 meeting with Saddam Haftar in Ankara and the participation of eastern and western Libyan forces in EFES 2026, Turkey’s major military exercise, further reflect efforts to foster coordination between the rival camps. The diplomatic drive also suggests Ankara is seeking channels to figures who could shape Libya’s future political and security arrangements.
Libya has remained divided since the 2011 uprising and military intervention that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, with Dbeibah’s government controlling much of the west, while Haftar’s forces and an eastern administration dominate the east and much of the south. Haftar’s 2019 offensive on Tripoli was repelled with Turkish military support, while the 2020 ceasefire ended the assault but left institutions fragmented. The UN has for years pursued a political settlement and elections to end Libya’s institutional divisions, but repeated efforts have stalled.
The contrast with 2019 could hardly be sharper. After intervening to halt Haftar’s advance, Ankara now appears focused on leveraging its presence to engage both sides rather than pursuing direct confrontation.
The rapprochement is not just about diplomacy. It is also about what Turkey stands to gain. Turkey’s Libya strategy increasingly combines political, security and defense interests with long-term ambitions in energy, infrastructure and reconstruction. The economic relationship is substantial: since 1972 Ankara has carried out 633 projects worth around $31 billion, while bilateral trade reached about $4.4 billion in 2025. In February, state energy firm TPAO secured rights to jointly operate two Libyan oil fields.
Turkey’s overture to the east also seeks to safeguard the 2019 maritime deal with Tripoli, which gives Ankara rights over potentially energy-rich waters but is opposed by Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel. With the eastern parliament yet to ratify it, closer ties with Haftar could broaden Libyan backing and strengthen Turkey’s position in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Turkey’s rapprochement with Haftar exposes the limits of a Libya policy long centered on Tripoli. While that approach secured Turkey considerable influence in western Libya, it gave Ankara far less reach in the east and south, making a broader strategy increasingly necessary. The shift therefore represents a pragmatic attempt to close that gap, with Haftar’s camp offering Turkey an opening to become an important eastern partner and a potential facilitator in Libya’s political and security landscape, Burak Can Çelik, a political affairs researcher specializing in Turkish foreign policy, argued.
The thaw with eastern Libya is also forward looking: an attempt to build a nationwide strategy that can withstand “Libya’s eventual political reconfiguration,” said Nebahat Tanriverdi, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs’ Center for Applied Turkey Studies. Tanriverdi identified three priorities: preserving the 2019 security and maritime agreements, securing a role in integrating Libya’s security institutions, and expanding Turkey’s footprint in reconstruction. Rather than acting as a neutral mediator, Ankara is seeking to shape political and security arrangements while protecting its own “vested interests,” Tanriverdi said.
Ankara’s outreach to eastern Libya also reflects a pragmatic commercial calculus. Turkey wants to “expand its defense industry and secure reliable clients to do business,” said Amanda Kadlec, a former member of the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on Libya, including within Haftar’s camp. The east may offer a more straightforward transactional relationship because of its more “vertically controlled” power structure, she observed, whereas overlapping armed-group interests in the west leave Ankara navigating a more fragmented set of interlocutors.
By engaging both Tripoli and Benghazi, Turkey is preserving its western ties while positioning itself for Libya’s political future. But Kadlec sees Ankara’s clout as limited by Libya’s competing internal and external actors. “It’s less about gaining leverage over Libya’s political future than securing Turkey’s own interests as a form of insurance, depending on how things unfold,” she said. She also cautioned that Turkey’s military backing of western Libya in 2019 may undermine its chances of being seen in the east as a “legitimate and trustworthy” mediator.
Meanwhile, Ankara’s credibility in western Libya rests on its 2019–2020 intervention that broke Haftar’s siege of Tripoli, Tanriverdi emphasized, so closer ties with his camp could strain that trust. Ankara is therefore stressing to western partners that its eastern outreach is “an effort to adapt to a changing political equation,” not a fundamental shift in alignment.
The move comes amid broader regional realignment, including improved ties with Egypt and the UAE, key Haftar backers during the conflict, giving Turkey greater room to maneuver between Libya’s factions without abandoning its longstanding western alliance. “It’s less about Turkey’s rapprochement with Haftar than the falling apart over the last four years of a bifurcated Libya, with different global blocs backing east and west,” said Jason Pack, Libya expert and founder of Libya-Analysis.
Growing Turkish-Egyptian coordination over Libya reflects a more pragmatic regional dynamic, with former rivals increasingly managing competing interests through diplomacy rather than opposing proxies. “Turkey wants to safeguard its political interests, regardless of who is in power,” Turkish foreign policy analyst Suat Delgen said. “To do so, it needs to keep channels open with all sides.” Delgen emphasized that Turkey’s reconciliation with Egypt helped enable its rapprochement with Haftar. He also noted that, particularly since July’s NATO summit, Ankara has increasingly aligned its Libya policy with Washington.
Under Massad Boulos, Donald Trump’s Arab and African affairs adviser, Washington is pushing a framework to unify Libya’s rival eastern and western camps under a single government and institutional structure, centered on security integration, political cooperation and unified economic management.
Critics fear the US is prioritizing an elite power-sharing deal while stabilizing Libya’s oil sector and opening it to greater US investment. Karim Mezran, director of the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Initiative, dismissed the Boulos plan as incapable of delivering a lasting solution. “The American mediation isn’t interested in solving Libya,” the North Africa expert said, “but rather in bringing together the two power centers created by the war.” A genuine settlement, he argued, would require foreign security guarantees and the involvement of Turkey, Egypt, and other key powers.
Regional powers are selectively backing, opposing or spoiling elements of the initiative to shape the deal in favour of their allies. “Each player is trying to be involved in the deal, making sure its clients get the best possible outcome,” Pack said.
As Turkey and other external powers compete for influence through business and diplomacy, such competition may reduce the risk of renewed war, but it could also make a “relatively stable but divided” Libya acceptable if outside actors can protect their interests without pushing for deeper political unification, Çelik observed.
“Libya’s political reunification may no longer be essential for Ankara if it can retain its influence in the west while gaining access to energy, reconstruction, defense and trade in the east,” the scholar said. The greater risk, he argued, may therefore be an entrenched divide in which foreign powers protect their interests while local elites retain power through continued external support.
