Tripoli, the evening of June 4, 2025.
Around sundown, I stood on the corniche of Treeg al-Shat near the Waddan Hotel, watching as a convoy of armored pickups moved hastily toward the Radisson Blu “al-Mahary”. The vehicles belonged to the General Security Apparatus (GSA) – a Zintani-led force headed by the Libyan Interior Minister’s brother that had become notorious within the capital for its involvement in looting during recent clashes that shook Tripoli. In the Turkish embassy premises adjacent to the Radisson hotel, a crisis meeting was underway. Turkey’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, had arrived hours earlier to intervene directly in a confrontation between the Government of National Unity-aligned units, and the Special Deterrence Force, a powerful militia rooted in north-eastern Tripoli.
Tensions spiked when Trabelsi’s convoy – more than a hundred armored vehicles from the same Zintani force whose conduct in clashes had already sparked outrage – arrived in the vicinity of al-Mahary, within territory historically controlled by the Special Deterrence Force (SDF). The familiar crack of 14.5mm anti-aircraft fire rang out moments later, intimidatingly discharged into the air. Fighters from the GSA circulated TikToks taunting the SDF, adding a layer of theatricality to an already fraught situation. The Turkish-brokered meeting continued behind closed doors, but outside, the brinkmanship exposed the limits of de-escalation in a security landscape defined by fragmentation and mutual distrust.
The scene offered a glimpse into the evolving challenges of Turkey’s Libya policy. Once confident in its ability to shape Tripoli’s security, Ankara now finds itself navigating the consequences of decisions made by partners with competing agendas. Over the past decade, Libya has arguably been Turkey’s most assertive foreign policy engagement after its 2016 intervention in Syria -blending drone deployments, military training, economic engagement, and high-profile diplomacy. But nearly five years after it helped repel Khalifa Haftar’s assault on the capital, Ankara is forced to quietly reassess what that intervention achieved, how sustainable its influence truly is, and how it should recalibrate its role moving forward.
Turkey’s intervention in Libya in early 2020 was both a military gamble and a geopolitical assertion. Faced with the prospect of a UAE- and Russia-backed force overrunning the UN-recognized government in Tripoli, Ankara moved decisively. It deployed drones, electronic warfare systems, Syrian mercenaries, and military advisors – changing the course of the war and forcing Khalifa Haftar’s retreat. At the time, Russian Wagner Group operatives and Emirati-supplied drones were helping to tip the balance in Haftar’s favor. Turkish officials have consistently framed their intervention as a humanitarian necessity, aligned with the spirit of UN Security Council resolutions and aimed at protecting civilians from urban warfare. But there was also an element of transactionalism. In return for intervening, Ankara could claim maritime rights in the Eastern Mediterranean, protected its multi-billion-dollar Gaddafi-era reconstruction contracts, and secured a long-term security presence in western Libya – one that went far beyond the scope of involvement pursued by any of its NATO peers post-revolution.
The October 2020 ceasefire marked a turning point in Libya’s conflict, halting open warfare and ushering in a fragile new phase. Though tenuous, the ceasefire held, and a long-standing belief took root: that if Turkey and Russia maintained their entente, another full-scale war – like the one that engulfed Libya in 2019–2020 – was unlikely to erupt. Their informal understanding created space for international diplomacy but also froze Libya into a delicate balance of power that mirrored their spheres of influence on the ground.
Libya entered a period of informal partition: Turkey held sway in the west, while Russia – leveraging its Wagner-linked networks and the complicity of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) – consolidated its influence across the east, center, and increasingly, the south. Within this post-ceasefire configuration, the Government of National Unity (GNU), led by Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dabeiba, came to power under U.N. auspices but with significant Turkish backing. The arrangement gave Ankara a platform to shape the post-war order and temporarily dominate the security architecture of western Libya.
What followed was a more ambitious phase of Turkish engagement – no longer reactive but geared toward embedding a durable presence. Ankara scaled its footprint at Mitiga and Watiya airbases, oversaw drone operations and capacity building at Misrata’s air academy, trained Libya’s coast guard in Khoms, and embedded personnel within key military facilities across western Libya. It trained Libyan aviation engineers in drone operationalization and, beyond the TB2 fleet delivered during the war, also supplied the Tripoli-based government with its more advanced Akinci UAVs. Notably, Syrian mercenaries retained a residual footprint in western Libya as a ground force Ankara could still leverage – all while remaining on the Libyan state’s payroll. Together, these measures signaled Ankara’s intent to transform short-term intervention into sustained protracted influence. While in practice this approach may have contributed to stabilization and was often presented as mutually beneficial, critics – both in Libya and abroad – increasingly framed the depth of Turkish involvement as indicative of a creeping neocolonial dynamic, raising concerns over sovereignty and long-term dependency.
Regardless, Ankara’s ambitions for prolonged influence soon ran up against Libya’s entrenched politico-military realities. After elections slated for December 2021 were indefinitely postponed, the GNU remained in power – a choice that handed its detractors fresh political ammunition to challenge its legitimacy and press for its replacement. In early 2022, former Interior Minister and Misratan political figure Fathi Bashagha attempted to force his way into Tripoli, capitalizing on growing fragmentation among western Libya’s armed groups to install himself as Libya’s new Prime Minister. Backed by factions from Zintan and Tripoli, his convoys approached the capital from its southwestern and eastern gateways. Turkey, while publicly silent, quietly acquiesced to the use of its TB2 drones by the GNU to target the advancing columns from the southwest. The drone strikes were critical. Bashagha’s effort unraveled before he reached Tripoli, and the GNU survived. For Ankara, the calculus was pragmatic: Bashagha’s move risked igniting a round of destabilizing conflict inside the capital – threatening its direct interests. The episode was instructive. It underscored just how brittle the GNU’s hold on security truly was – and hinted at the deeper dilemmas Ankara would soon confront, not just in Tripoli, but across its Libya policy.
By late 2022, the strategic cracks in Ankara’s Libya policy began to widen. Turkey privately offered to help unify and professionalize the GNU’s fragmented armed forces – a proposal that, despite the clear need, the GNU declined. The government argued, behind closed doors, that they could manage Western Libya’s armed groups through existing patronage networks. In practice, they preferred to preserve the fluid constellation of militias that had enabled their rise – chief among them Ghnewa al-Kikli, whose alignment during key confrontations with Bashagha had been critical to the GNU’s survival. Part of the reasoning was also geopolitical: wary of appearing overly close to Ankara, the GNU sought to hedge – keeping channels open to the UAE, Egypt, key European capitals, and the United States. Ankara acquiesced, but the rejection stung. Despite having helped preserve the capital militarily and politically, Turkey was not being treated as a long-term partner – merely one power among several to be balanced or sidelined as needed.
Over the next two years, Turkish policy shifted subtly. From enabler, it became more of a gatekeeper. Ankara maintained its relationships with the GNU but began expanding contact with actors outside its camp – initially through the eastern-based House of Representatives but gradually gravitating toward the real centers of power: Khalifa Haftar and his family. This pivot was driven by multiple frustrations: the Dabeibas’ courting of multiple foreign backers (including Abu Dhabi, with whom Ankara’s once-frosty relationship had recently thawed); the visible fragmentation among armed groups in western Libya; and growing concerns in Ankara over diminishing returns on its security-sector investments, particularly in capacity building.
Turkey’s outreach to Haftar was also informed by practical considerations. The Turkish-Libyan maritime demarcation agreement – signed with the previous internationally recognized Tripoli-based government – would have gained significantly greater legitimacy had it secured at least the acquiescence, if not the endorsement, of the eastern authorities who controlled the coastline where it would theoretically apply. Eastern Libya also offered reconstruction and infrastructure opportunities for Turkish firms, a prospect made more viable by the Haftars’ improved financial position following their increasing control over the National Oil Corporation (NOC) and enhanced access to revenues. Ankara’s engagement unfolded alongside a cautious thaw in Turko-Egyptian relations. While Cairo viewed Ankara’s outreach to Haftar with suspicion – seeing it as encroachment in its traditional sphere of influence – the Haftars, eager for more international legitimacy and economic partnerships, saw value in entertaining Turkish overtures regardless. For Ankara, the motivation was less about regional posturing and more about managing risk: Libya’s Tripoli-based political center was proving increasingly less reliable, and Turkey could no longer afford to depend on a single axis of influence.
The crystallization of Turkey’s shifting posture in Libya was perhaps most clearly illustrated in its response to the wave of instability that followed the GNU’s sudden elimination of Ghnewa in May 2025. While Ankara had long positioned itself as a stabilizing force in Tripoli, its actions during this period revealed a new dilemma: it was now compelled to intervene not to prop up allies against external threats, but to moderate the destabilizing impulses of those very allies in power. Turkey – like many Western actors – had no reason to oppose the move against Ghnewa, whose growing autonomy and grip on state institutions had become a liability. Despite lacking meaningful ties to Libya’s key foreign stakeholders, he had increasingly styled himself as a kingmaker in the capital – a posture that many, inside and outside Libya, came to see as untenable. His removal, though abrupt, was therefore seen by Ankara as course correction.
But the aftermath of the Ghnewa operation marked a turning point in Ankara’s outlook. Emboldened by the swift collapse of Ghnewa’s forces, the GNU quickly pivoted toward dismantling the SDF, a more institutionalized and socially rooted actor that held control over key infrastructure, including Mitiga airbase. As the facility also hosted Turkish uniformed personnel and served as one of the nerve centres of Turkey’s military presence in the capital, the escalation raised alarms in Ankara. For the first time, the threat to Tripoli’s stability was not coming from outside the GNU – but from within it.
Turkey’s response was quiet but unmistakable. When GNU-aligned forces launched a surprise ground assault on SDF positions in early May, they encountered stiff resistance from the group and the allies it haphazardly secured. What was marketed to foreign policymakers by the GNU as a swift operation quickly spiraled into a broader confrontation. The SDF mobilized reinforcements, and fighting spread into densely populated areas across Tripoli, edging toward full-scale urban warfare. As the operation faltered, GNU forces turned to airpower. Despite explicit Turkish directives against using Bayraktar TB2 drones in the campaign, a drone was launched from Misrata’s air academy. According to personnel at the base, the drone veered off course mid-flight and crashed into the sea. Their assessment – which is also the most plausible explanation given the TB2’s advanced navigation systems and pre-programmed flight paths – is that Turkish operatives spoofed its GPS, in what they widely understand to have been a calibrated intervention reportedly ordered at the highest levels in Ankara. The same sources described this episode as having triggered internal tensions and an altercation within the air academy itself.
For Ankara, the message was clear: it would not allow its technology – or its credibility – to be hijacked in a campaign it had not authorized. A ceasefire was swiftly brokered in Tripoli the following day – but not before the GNU had emerged publicly bruised and diplomatically exposed. In its aftermath, the Presidency Council and UNSMIL announced the formation of a joint truce committee tasked with overseeing the fragile pause in hostilities and formulating security arrangements for the capital. Yet the body’s vague remit and lack of enforcement tools rendered it largely ineffective. Disconnected from both the militia actors driving events on the ground and the public frustrations simmering across Tripoli, the committee offered little prospect of tangibly altering the trajectory of the crisis.
While segments of the Libyan public expressed fatigue with militia impunity, many were equally outraged by the GNU’s attempt to brand its campaign as anti-militia while simultaneously mobilizing what many considered were militias of its own. The government surviving this discontent was, in large part, owed to a wave of astroturf activism encouraged – and in some cases subsidized – by its political opponents, who seized the moment to venally discredit it. Yet these detractors were united by little more than a shared desire to see the government fall – a narrow agenda that diluted broader public anger, stifled meaningful civic engagement, and, in many quarters, earned them as much public disdain as the administration they sought to unseat. Protests, where they occurred, were increasingly thin and overtly politicized. The GNU, however, interpreted the lack of mass mobilization as validation, conflating public disengagement with tacit support. It even funded counter-protests of its own to project a sense of popular backing. Emboldened, it began contemplating renewed escalation – a direction that Ankara viewed with growing unease, wary it would unravel what stability remained.
A mere few days after the clashes, Turkey dispatched its deputy intelligence chief to Tripoli to dissuade the GNU from renewing its offensive against the group. Among other efforts, he convened a mediation between Tripoli-based Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dabeiba and Abderrauf Kara, the Salafi-leaning commander at the helm of the SDF, at the Abu Sitta naval base. The meeting failed to produce results. Despite battlefield setbacks, and with the prospect of large-scale urban destruction and disruption to Tripoli’s only functioning airport looming, the GNU remained intent on pressing ahead – confident in its ability to quash the group under the mantle of its anti-militia campaign. It was a confidence Ankara did not share.
As tensions mounted and residents feared a return to destructive urban warfare, Turkey’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, arrived in person – not to negotiate, but to attempt contentiously to impose de-escalation.
But if the visit’s timing is reflective of anything, it is that Ankara is no longer consolidating gains but containing fallout. The events of May 2025 exposed the constraints of Turkey’s current approach in Libya, highlighting the difficulty of translating tactical influence into durable political outcomes. Having invested political and military capital in the GNU, Ankara now finds itself managing the whims of a partner that resists reform, acts unilaterally, and increasingly threatens the superficial version of stability it has been content to uphold. Despite years of backing, the Tripoli-based executive has proven unable – or unwilling – to convert short-term advantage into structural change. Rather than shaping outcomes, Ankara has been drawn into restraining its own allies and shielding its assets from deployment in confrontations it neither designed nor endorsed.
This reality did not initiate Ankara’s recalibration in Libya, but it is likely to accelerate a shift already in motion. Since late 2022, Turkish officials have come to view Libya less as a standalone file and more as a component of a broader regional “Afro-Eurasian” strategy. As Ankara expands its footprint in Chad, Sudan, and Niger – through security cooperation, infrastructure projects, and diplomatic outreach – Libya has taken on new value: a logistical hub and forward operating platform for its growing presence across the Sahel. Within that framework, Tripoli has become increasingly peripheral by design. The GNU lacks the reach – and often the inclination – to serve as a meaningful partner on Ankara’s trans-Sahelian agenda. This has shaped Turkey’s engagement inside Libya, prompting outreach to actors better positioned to facilitate cross-border coordination. The aim is no longer to navigate Tripoli’s internal rivalries, but to bypass and ultimately supersede them in pursuit of a more coherent regional position.
Ankara’s current posture reflects this shift. Its response to the recent crisis was not about choosing sides but about preserving its interests and containing escalation. Rather than seeking resolution, Turkey now appears focused on freezing the conflict – stabilizing key fronts to protect its assets and maintain leverage. Kalin’s visit signaled more than concern over the fighting; it reflected Ankara’s growing view that the UN-led de-escalation process, belatedly established and still in place, is ill-conceived and insufficient to prevent renewed outbreaks of violence. In response, Turkey has begun to act unilaterally. Just two days after Kalin’s meetings, the Presidency Council issued decrees – one of which established a new “security arrangements committee.” The move, welcomed by the SDF, was widely seen as influenced by Ankara and designed to create a coordination mechanism involving actors it already engages with. By ensuring its key interlocutors are embedded in the process, Turkey is seeking to shape the crisis architecture from within – not through direct control, but by anchoring a formula it can work with and monitor closely. At this stage, the priority is less about ending the crisis than shaping its trajectory on terms it can manage.
Taken together, Turkey’s recent actions – from its quiet but stern intervention in Tripoli’s clashes to its expanded outreach to eastern Libyan actors – reflect a strategic environment in flux. Critically, the erosion of Russia’s leverage over Turkey following the collapse of the Assad regime has upended the four-year-old mantra that a Turko-Russian entente underwrites Libya’s negative peace. While this shift does not necessarily herald a return to confrontation between Ankara and Moscow or their local allies, it does afford Turkey greater latitude in how it operates – and may enable a more assertive posture in safeguarding its interests. That recalibrated posture is further reinforced by Ankara’s deepening and unprecedented ties with the Haftar family – a development that not only broadens Turkey’s access across Libya’s political geography but also signals its intent to hedge across former fault lines rather than remain tethered to any single camp.
Rather than doubling down on the Dabeibas, Turkish officials are now likely to assess how to sustain their position regardless of who leads a Tripoli-based government. That means identifying alternative political pathways – and, where necessary, cultivating relationships with new actors – through which Ankara can maintain security cooperation and preserve access, not only in Tripoli but in the broader regional framework Libya is now a part of. The Dabeibas, once central to Turkey’s managed stability model, are increasingly viewed as situational allies – viable when aligned, replaceable when not. But political transition in Tripoli rarely comes without confrontation. Moreover, the political atmosphere in Tripoli is thick with unresolved rivalries, as factions continue to test red lines and still appear intent on provoking a broader crisis. The brief post-Eid clashes provoked by the SDF, alongside the GNU Prime Minister’s efforts to rally Misratan factions behind him, underscore just how fragile the situation remains. The task for Ankara now is not just to preserve influence, but to navigate potential change without triggering the violent instability it seeks to contain – all while contending with the reality that waiting for a credible UN process to take hold may be unrealistic, especially as few international actors approach Libya with the same urgency as Ankara’s.
All in all, five years after it helped repel Haftar’s assault on Tripoli, Turkey finds itself in a more ambiguous position: not losing control, but no longer fully in charge. Securing victory in war, it turns out, was easier than averting a new one while steering Libya toward a political order that safeguards Turkish interests. The tools Ankara once used to project influence – drones, diplomacy, and partnerships – now serve to manage escalation and buy time. In a city where the next shift in power can begin with a convoy at dusk, Turkey’s challenge is less about who holds power, and more about ensuring it retains leverage over what comes after the dust settles.
