The Turkish parliament voted in December 2025 to extend the deployment of Turkish armed forces in Libya for another two years. The decision keeps an already seven-year deployment of Turkish troops, military advisors, and training teams on the ground alongside the Government of National Unity in Tripoli. The military relationship between Turkey and Libya’s Tripoli-based government began with the 2019 agreements that delivered Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones and equipment to Western Libya. Those drones halted the Benghazi-based and more secular Libyan National Army’s advances in 2020. Today, the Turkish deployment and drone fleet anchor Tripoli’s air capabilities and sustain a broader pipeline of Turkish weapons that solidifies Ankara’s foothold on the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
The 2019 political and military agreements between Ankara and Tripoli redrew maritime boundaries across the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey made expansive exclusive economic zone claims that cut directly into waters claimed by Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, and Israel. The deal grants Turkish firms priority access to disputed offshore gas fields and creates a strategic corridor that lets Ankara shape energy flows into Europe.
The Turkish deployment and drone fleet ... sustain a broader pipeline of Turkish weapons that solidifies Ankara’s foothold on the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
At the same time, Turkish oversight of Western Libyan ports and coastal waters gives Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan leverage over migration routes. European governments recognize the established pattern: When Ankara signals displeasure, departures of migrant boats toward Italy increase by the thousands.
Eastern Libya follows a different logic. Oil production averaged 1.37 million barrels per day across 2025—the highest level in more than a decade. The Eastern authorities secure most of the producing fields and export terminals that generate most of this revenue.
Libyan oil revenue should benefit Libyans rather than Turkish businessmen, Swiss bankers, or extremists. Eastern leaders have routed funds through the private Arkenu Oil Company, reportedly controlled by Saddam Haftar, the Libyan National Army’s deputy commander in chief. Between May and December 2024, that company exported 7.6 million barrels worth roughly $600 million. Those dollars build infrastructure; they are not disappearing into militia payrolls or foreign accounts.
Construction of the new Benina International Airport in Benghazi proceeds at full pace. The $1.3 billion project includes a 125,000-square-meter terminal, a 2.3-mile runway—the longest in North Africa—and capacity for 15 million passengers a year once it opens this year. The facility will accommodate the largest commercial aircraft and function as a regional hub.
Eastern authorities have also contracted a Turkish firm to make air navigation and ground communication upgrades at seven airports, including Benghazi, Sabha, and Tobruk. This represents concrete reconstruction. Tripoli’s main airport, by contrast, remains scarred by years of fighting and shows no comparable modernization effort, forcing all flights instead to utilize a former air base.
The geopolitical stakes extend beyond Libya’s borders. Europe faces energy vulnerability. Libyan crude offers a direct, non-Russian, non-Iranian alternative that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. Eastern forces already protect the pipelines and terminals that feed those exports. Western reliance on Turkish military support, however, channels oil revenues into contracts that enrich Ankara’s defense industry and allied militias. Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone sales alone reached $1.8 billion in 2024, with Libya serving as both a paying customer and a live-fire testing ground. The pattern strengthens Erdoğan’s position inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) while weakening the alliance’s southern flank.
Turkish oversight of ports and training facilities allows Erdoğan to decide which groups receive priority weapons and cash.
Since the 2019 intervention, Ankara has equipped and trained Tripoli-aligned militias with documented ties to Islamist networks. This includes support for factions rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood and remnants of the Libya Dawn coalition, some echoing Ansar al-Sharia ideology. Turkish oversight of ports and training facilities allows Erdoğan to decide which groups receive priority weapons and cash. The Bayraktar TB2 drones and advisory teams do more than defend Tripoli. They embed these militias within western Libya and turn the region into a forward operating base for Ankara’s wider Mediterranean strategy.
Eastern governance, despite its imperfections, converts hydrocarbon wealth into public goods instead of foreign leverage or extremist financing. The east has stabilized production after earlier shutdowns that once reduced output to 600,000 barrels per day. It has demonstrated the ability to deliver tangible results in the territories it controls.
The Mediterranean does not tolerate power vacuums. Turkey’s military sales and advisory presence in western Libya form a deliberate strategy to dominate energy corridors, migration routes, and maritime claims at the direct expense of NATO partners. Eastern Libya’s record of field security and infrastructure investment offers a pragmatic counterweight.
European and American officials who treat the Tripoli government as the sole legitimate authority reward the faction that hosts foreign troops and Islamist-linked groups. They punish the side that guards oil infrastructure and spends revenues on airports and roads. The numbers from the ground are unambiguous. Support the side that rebuilds with its own oil revenues or keep subsidizing the trench that imports Turkish drones for Islamists and exports regional instability.
