A new conflict is simmering in the Eastern Mediterranean that, to the untrained eye, may seem to be the Libyan Civil War. But it, in fact, has Turkey trying to re-establish its domain in the Arab World that it lost after the First World War, something that ended almost 600 years of Ottoman Turkish rule over the Arab people in the colonized Arab lands.
Now the UN Security Council has stepped in, calling the two sides of the Libyan conflict to reach a ceasefire agreement and to revive the political process that aims to end the ongoing war.
However, the likelihood of a ceasefire in Libya is unlikely for one simple reason: Turkey seeks to rule Libya through its puppets, betting on the hope that Moscow, Berlin or the UN Security Council do not have the will and the backbone to stand up to Turkish President Erdogan’s bullying posture.
It is doubtful if the EU, NATO or the U.S. are aware of Turkey’s attempts to re-establish the semblance of an Islamic Caliphate through its proxies in the Arab World.
Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander Ahmad Shihabi: “We will go to Libya, China, and wherever there is jihad ... for the sake of the Ottoman Caliphate.” |
The words of the commander of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) reveals the real Turkish agenda. In an interview on January 17, FSA commander Ahmad Shihabi told Turkey’s AkitTV: “We will go to Libya, China, and wherever there is jihad; We are willing to sacrifice our lives and our children for the sake of the Ottoman Caliphate.”
Turkish rule over the Arabs ended in the 1920s when the dynamic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk threw out the Sultans and renounced the Ottomans’ centuries-old Islamic Caliphate by establishing a secular Republic of Turkey based on European principles of the nation state.
Now as the world approaches the 100th anniversary of Atatürk’s unique experiment with the successful secularisation of an Islamic society, the Islamist government of President Erdogan in is hell-bent on erasing all of Ataturk’s advances and re-establish Islamism in the country and its colonial realm over the Arab world.
This is most visible in Syria, but now also in Libya where Turkey is arming and funding the UN-recognised but besieged government of Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj, which is fighting for its survival against the Libyan National Army of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, a dual Libyan-American citizen.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan seeks to re-establish Islamism in Turkey and its former Arab colonial realm.
President Erdogan also sees a maritime border deal with the besieged government in Tripoli to generate more clout in the resource-rich waters of the Mediterranean, which worries fellow NATO member Greece, the island of Cyprus and of course Egypt.
Conferences in Moscow and Berlin have taken place but have not yet produced either a ceasefire or the hope of any cessation of hostilities between the Egypt-Cyprus-Greece backed Haftar forces on one side and the Turkish-backed tottering government of Fayez Sarraj on the other.
While European leaders try to ensure that a full-fledged war does not break out, Cyprus, Greece and Egypt as early as October last year saw through Turkish ambitions and warned Ankara to “end its provocative actions” in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, including exploring for oil in Cyprus’ territorial waters, which they called “a breach of international law”.
Reuters reported that, in response, Turkey sent a drilling ship to the area where Greek Cypriot authorities have already awarded hydrocarbon exploration rights to Italian and French companies.
Turkey’s expansionist policies are not limited to the Mediterranean. Ankara has galvanized support in the non-Arab Muslim world by bringing Malaysia, Iran and Pakistan under its wings as a counter-balance to the Saudi-led, Arab dominated Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The demise of democracy in Turkey may be a setback for the Turkish people and its Kurdish minority, but the silver lining may be the cracks in the international Islamist movements that seek to undermine democracies in Canada, U.S., Europe and India.
Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and columnist at the Toronto Sun, is a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum.