Turkey's Secret Proxy War in Libya? | The National Interest
Libya’s internationally recognized Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni accused Turkey last month of sending weapons to his Islamist rivals who seized the Libyan capital of Tripoli last year ..
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/turkeys-secret-proxy-war-libya-12430
bya’s internationally recognized Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni accused Turkey last month of sending weapons to his Islamist rivals who seized the Libyan capital of Tripoli last year. “Turkey is a state that is not dealing honestly with us,” he told Egyptian television. “It’s exporting weapons to us so the Libyan people kill each other.”
These accusations are not new. In January, the speaker of Libya’s Parliament claimed, “Turkey still supports the terrorist militias in Libya.” In December, a prominent Benghazi-based activist claimed that Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, a faction loyal to al-Qaeda that has carried out acts of political violence against the recognized Libyan government , is partially funded by “businessmen linked by trade ties to Turkey.”
Two weeks ago, the acting interior minister of the embattled government in Tobruk claimed that Turkish and Qatari aircraft are flying in and out of the Mitiga air base, which is controlled by the opposing Dawn coalition, amounting to “clear and explicit support” for terrorism in Libya.
The Libyan Civil War, which began after Qaddaffi’s fall, is often described as a proxy war, with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates reportedly backing al-Thinni and the officially recognized government in Tobruk, and Qatar and Turkey reportedly backing the Islamists and other opposition factions.
Turkey has made no secret about backing the country’s Islamists after Qaddaffi’s fall in 2011, and it openly liaises with the self-declared Islamist government in Tripoli. Yet Turkey’s Libyan envoy complains that these latest allegations are a “ dangerous smear campaign .”
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