Egypt and Turkey, two long-time enemies, are in a race against time to resolve the new Libyan crisis

(Bloomberg) — Egypt and Turkey are using their new friendship to try to resolve a power struggle in OPEC member Libya that threatens to escalate into civil war.

After taking opposing sides in a previous Libyan conflict five years ago, Cairo and Ankara are pressing the North African country's two rival governments to reach a deal that would help end a crippling oil blockade, according to officials and diplomats following the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.

Turkey has also held talks with Libyan military leader Khalifa Haftar, a longtime ally of Egypt and Ankara’s arch-foe in the 2019-20 war. The eastern separatist parliament backed by Haftar is at odds with the U.N.-recognized Tripoli administration led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah in a dispute over who should lead the central bank that effectively controls the country’s vast oil wealth.

While there are no illusions about the scale of the challenge, and Egypt and Turkey are just a few of the foreign powers with influence in Libya, their combined influence has significantly reduced fears of open war, diplomats say. Three Libyan officials familiar with the policy decisions agreed that improved relations would significantly reduce the risks of a new conflict in the short term.

The Turkish and Egyptian foreign ministries declined to comment on the reports.

The desire to resolve the Libyan crisis is just one of the recent commonalities between Turkey and Egypt, which have been at odds for the better part of a decade over Turkish support for political Islam. The two countries have taken a common stance against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and have found their interests converge on the civil war in Sudan and an increasingly volatile relationship between Somalia and its neighbor, Ethiopia.

The challenges facing our region and the world today demonstrably confirm the imperative for close coordination and cooperation, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said earlier this month during his first visit to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan since becoming leader of North Africa's largest economy in 2014.

Relations between the two countries deteriorated after the military ousted Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, a move Erdogan criticized for years. A thaw began in 2021, leading to a historic handshake between El-Sisi and Erdogan at the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Prolonged impasse

UN-brokered negotiations to resolve the Libyan conflict have yet to bear fruit. The crisis erupted in mid-August, when the Tripoli government fired longtime Central Bank governor Sadiq Al-Kabir, who was responsible for managing revenues of more than a million barrels of crude per day.

The eastern administration, which had established ties with Al-Kabir, responded by suspending Libyan oil production and exports, disrupting energy markets by cutting off supplies that are mainly destined for southern Europe.

Signs of the rapprochement between Egypt and Turkey are visible in Libya itself. More and more Egyptian companies and workers are returning to Tripoli and other parts of the west of the country, generally under the control of Turkey’s local allies. At the same time, Turkish companies are ready to participate in reconstruction projects in the east of the country, which is an ally of Egypt, particularly around the city of Derna, where devastating floods killed thousands of people a year ago.

It’s a far cry from 2019, when Haftar’s Libyan National Army marched on Tripoli in an attempt to overthrow a Turkish-backed government. More than 2,000 people, mostly fighters, are estimated to have been killed in months of fighting, in which Haftar also had the backing of Russia and the United Arab Emirates. The UN brokered a peace deal in late 2020, though attempts to reunify the country under Dbeibah failed and promised elections did not take place.

Sudan, Somalia

South of Egypt, Sudan, where a civil war has been raging for 17 months, is another area where interests could converge. Cairo and Ankara have hosted Sudanese military leader Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan on an official visit since the conflict began. That honor was not extended to opposition leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, head of the paramilitary force fighting for control of Africa's third-largest country.

In Somalia, both countries have expanded their military presence. Turkey has its largest foreign base in the Horn of Africa country and has held negotiations on establishing a site to test missiles and space rockets.

Egypt has started supplying weapons to the Somali army and plans to train soldiers, Somalia's foreign minister said, amid growing tensions with neighboring Ethiopia over the breakaway region of Somaliland. Egypt also has a long-running dispute with Addis Ababa over the construction of a giant dam on the Nile, which Cairo says could affect the flow of its river downstream.

For Erdogan, improving relations with Egypt is part of a broader plan to improve ties with Arab powers and boost the Turkish economy through increased investment and exports. Turkey has improved relations with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in the past two years.

The civil war in Sudan, the conflicts between Egypt and Ethiopia and the increased risk of military and political conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia are structural dynamics that strategically affect Turkey-Egypt relations, Murat Yesiltas, director of security policy at the Ankara-based think tank SETA, which advises Erdogan's government, said in an article published this month.

Cooperation between Ankara and Cairo appears to be a strategic necessity.

–With assistance from Kevin Dharmawan.

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