Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the head of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC), said in an interview published in Turkish media last month that Turkey had agreed to train the new Libyan army. Abdel-Jalil said the deal, which will see Libyan soldiers sent to Turkey for instruction, was arranged when he met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a visit to Istanbul last week.
“Ankara is not really in any position to help Abdel-Jalil and the NTC consolidate power, but the Turks do see an opportunity in Libya to re-establish their influence in North Africa.”
Abdel-Jalil did not say precisely when the training will begin and there was no immediate confirmation from Ankara. But the announcement itself obscures a larger issue: Libya does not yet actually have a fully established army. In fact, in the aftermath of the downfall of Moammar Gadhafi’s regime, Libya still lacks any centralized political authority. The country is still struggling to recover from the monthslong war against Gadhafi, and neither the NTC nor the transitional government it formed in November constitutes a true, legitimized authority. Power lies in the hands of the armed militias, and none of those are strong enough on their own to begin acting as a national military force. The international community has long viewed the NTC as the embryo of the future Libyan state. Yet at the moment, the NTC counts among its challenges the most basic task of state formation: establishing internal security. The ongoing formation of the Libyan National Army is the centerpiece of the NTC’s push to accomplish this task, but so far, all attempts at threatening the militias into subservience have accomplished next to nothing.
Ankara is in no position to help Abdel-Jalil and the NTC consolidate power, but the Turks do see an opportunity in Libya to re-establish their influence in North Africa. Turkey is thus dealing with the governing body with which, as a result of the war, it is most familiar. Turkey was hesitant to come on board with the NATO operation that sought to oust Gadhafi, and it never did participate in the air campaign itself. Nevertheless, Ankara staunchly supported the NTC in several other arenas throughout most of the conflict. Abdel-Jalil has a personal relationship with the Turkish leadership, which sees in Libya a bigger opportunity than what exists in Tunisia and Egypt. Unlike the other two North African countries affected this year by regional uprisings, Libya underwent a complete regime collapse, meaning there is a much larger power vacuum for outside players to fill. In the eyes of the NTC, Turkey helped play a role – even if a slight one — in ousting the Gadhafi regime. Considering the amount of high-quality crude oil Libya possesses, Ankara sees the potential for more than just strategic benefits in filling such a vacuum.
North Africa was always a difficult place for the Turks to control, even during the height of the Ottoman Empire. The region sat on the empire’s periphery and typically proved a net drain on Turkey’s resources. Egypt, which Turkey wants to shape as its regional proxy in North Africa, could never truly be conquered by outside powers — whether that power was British, French or Ottoman. Although Turkey seems to believe it will be able to bring Egypt back under its influence, the Egyptian ruling elite is highly unlikely to share this vision. As concerns the Maghreb, the Ottomans found great difficulty in trying to project influence along the Barbary Coast and in fact, they outsourced much of their imperial management in this region to the Barbary States. Now that new Islamist-oriented polities are rising in stature in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, the government led by the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara is searching for a warm reception for a return of Turkish influence in the region. In any case, Turkey must first deal with a set of constraints much closer to home. These will make North Africa a secondary issue concern for the time being.
Internally, Turkey is dealing with several issues that will require much of the AKP’s attention in the coming year: a looming struggle to amend the constitution, rumored reports that Erdogan is suffering from a severe and potentially life-threatening illness and an ongoing political power struggle between Islamists and secularists. Libya is not even Ankara’s top foreign policy priority. Turkey is far more concerned with the instability right across its own border in Syria, for example, than it is with the state of the Libyan army. Despite the headlines, Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s regime has shown no signs of imminent collapse, and it is very possible that this problem will continue to fester throughout next year. Turkey has made clear its stance in Syria’s regard: it wants al Assad to go. Ankara wants Syria to return to Sunni rule, but the Turkish government has not shown that it is prepared to do what it takes to make this happen. Most critically, Turkey is watching a power vacuum in Iraq being filled by the Shia majority and by Turkey’s natural competitor, Iran. The intensifying crisis in Iraq is already causing the country to show signs of either fracturing or coming under the control of a centralized Shiite power in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal. Either of the above scenarios would have an impact on Kurdish militants in Turkey and on Turkey’s overall ability to expand in the region. Turkey undoubtedly has a strategic interest in North Africa. The question is whether Ankara will actually be able to project influence further afield, at a time when it faces much more critical issues closer to home.
“Turkey’s limited options for projecting power in North Africa” republished with permission of Stratfor, www.stratfor.com
