The seabed scramble: Can Haftar realign Libya through maritime leverage?

Libya’s House of Representatives, sitting in Benghazi, voted unanimously on Tuesday to ratify the maritime memorandum Turkey signed in 2019 with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. Six years after it refused to put the deal to a vote, and cut political ties with Ankara, the same body, which leads the eastern camp, reversed both decisions on Oct. 20.

The vote came about two weeks after the ousting of Aguila Saleh, speaker since 2014, and his replacement by Al-Salehin Abdel Nabi Al-Obeidi, who is close to Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army. It also followed months of widening Turkish contacts with figures in Haftar’s camp.

Whose sea?

On Nov. 27, 2019, Turkey and Libya’s Government of National Accord, headed by Fayez Al-Sarraj, signed a “memorandum of understanding on maritime jurisdiction zones in the Mediterranean.”

The signing took place in Istanbul after Sarraj met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in the middle of the Tripoli war, when Haftar’s forces were fighting to take the capital. The memorandum entered into force on Dec. 8, 2019, and Ankara registered it with the United Nations.

It draws a line between the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf that Turkey and Libya each claim in the eastern Mediterranean, that is, the stretch of sea running out from the coast, including the seabed and what lies beneath it. That gives both countries rights to explore marine resources.

When the Government of National Accord’s mandate ended in 2021 and the Government of National Unity, led by Abdulhamid Dbeibah, was formed, the new government inherited the memorandum. The House in the east, once Haftar’s ally and an adversary of the Government of National Accord, never ratified it and rejected it. That stood until the Benghazi vote changed it.

Egypt’s rejection

The main parties the agreement touches reacted differently. Turkey’s foreign ministry welcomed the ratification, calling the agreement grounded in international law and equity and protective of both countries’ shared rights and interests. It said Ankara would keep working with its partners for security, stability and peace in the Mediterranean basin.

Most telling were the two calls made by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. He phoned Dbeibah, prime minister of the Government of National Unity in Tripoli, and Saddam Haftar, deputy commander-in-chief in the east, who delivered the vote for him, and thanked both for approving the memorandum. Saddam called the agreement “a tool that can help protect Libya’s rights and economic interests in the Mediterranean,” Reuters reported.

Athens answered at once with a foreign ministry statement saying the vote did not change the memorandum’s character as “null and void and cannot produce any legal consequences for third States.” Greece argued that Ankara and Tripoli do not face each other across opposite or adjacent coasts that could serve as a legal basis for delimitation: Crete and other Greek islands lie between Turkey’s southern coast and Libya’s eastern coast. Gas discoveries in recent years have set off competing claims to Mediterranean waters, so much so that Athens and Cairo signed an agreement in 2020 delimiting the exclusive economic zone between them.

Cairo’s publicly announced response, on the first day, amounted to a phone call. Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty spoke with his Greek counterpart, according to an Egyptian foreign ministry statement, which said the call focused on “the Libya issue in light of recent developments” and on preparations for the next summit of the Egypt–Greece–Cyprus trilateral mechanism.

On Wednesday, though, Cairo declared its categorical rejection of the House’s ratification. The foreign ministry reiterated that the memorandum, which Egypt had also rejected when it was issued, is null and void, without legal effect, and that ratifying it creates no legal consequences for Egypt.

The Egyptian statement stressed that the memorandum violates the principles of the international law of the sea and the provisions of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on delimiting the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, which rest on principles of justice and equity. It said the memorandum clearly infringes Egypt’s sovereign rights in its own exclusive economic zone and continental shelf.

The European Union joined the objection. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she “deeply regrets” the House’s ratification, adding that it affects the sovereign rights of three countries, is incompatible with the law of the sea, and is null and void and without legal effect. She renewed the bloc’s solidarity with Greece and Cyprus.

What changed?

Aguila Saleh headed the House for about 12 years. To Cairo, he was a close ally and a bulwark in the east against Turkish influence, and he repeatedly declared the agreement void. That era ended in two days, in a sudden parliamentary move led by deputies who opposed his policies and wanted to end his one-man rule over decisions.

On Monday, Oct. 5, 98 deputies, meeting in formal session in Benghazi, voted to amend the House’s rules so that the term of the speaker and his two deputies is limited to a single 12 months. Under the amendment, they deemed Saleh’s term legally over, and the next day they elected Obeidi as the new speaker.

Saleh and his supporters tried to challenge the proceedings’ legitimacy, calling them void on constitutional grounds, but the new leadership imposed its authority and presented them with a fait accompli. The new speaker is no stranger to the Turkey issue. A deputy for Tobruk, from Saleh’s own tribe, he once chaired the House’s Libyan-Turkish friendship committee.

The east was not the only beneficiary. Saleh’s removal was a political win for Dbeibah and eased the pressure on him, after a years-long struggle with Saleh that sharpened when the House voted in August 2024 to end his government’s mandate. Dbeibah’s implicit welcome of the change showed in his rapprochement with the new House leadership. That rapprochement translated into ratifying the memorandum and canceling the 2020 decision to cut ties with Ankara, and it gives him more room for maneuver to arrange new alliances in eastern Libya and move past the earlier impasse.

An Egyptian diplomatic source familiar with the matter told Al Manassa that “this change in the eastern parliament’s positions clearly reflects the new reality of the balance of power between eastern and western Libya.” But he reads the shift as part of a broader plan by Saddam Haftar, seen as his father’s heir, to widen his circle of power: “He is pushing hard for the support of the Americans and the Turks, to gain wider room that lets him outdo Dbeibah.”

The source added that “Saddam aspires to rule all of Libya and to become head of state in the future, rather than being content to remain ruler of the eastern region alone.”

Three capitals, one card

Saddam Haftar, youngest son of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and now deputy commander-in-chief of the Libyan National Army’s armed forces, is moving in three directions at once. The approach to Turkey began well before the vote. In August 2025 the Turkish warship Kinaliada called at Tripoli and then Benghazi, the first time a Turkish warship had visited both of Libya’s power centers in a single tour.

Saddam received a Turkish defense ministry delegation that was aboard, and the ministry said the talks were held under the slogan “One Libya, one army.” The slogan shows how far the eastern camp, which resisted Turkish intervention for years, has shifted. Then came Saddam’s meeting with Fidan in Ankara in late July 2026.

On the US track, Saddam met the commander of US Africa Command in February 2026, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, together with Massad Boulos, senior adviser to President Donald Trump for Arab and African affairs. They discussed steps toward unifying the Libyan army across east and west, and preparations for Flintlock, the largest special forces exercise in Africa, which the United States runs every year.

In March, The Washington Post reported that Ballard Partners, one of the best-known lobbying and government-relations firms in the United States, with ties to figures in the Trump administration, had signed a $2 million contract to represent Khalifa and Saddam Haftar. In June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio received Saddam in Washington, and the two discussed efforts to unify Libya’s military, economic and political institutions.

With Russia, the equation is complete. In August, President Vladimir Putin received Saddam at the Kremlin, a day after he met the defense minister. Russian forces are stationed at bases under the Haftar family’s control under the name Africa Corps, formerly known as Wagner. A June report by the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency noted growing activity at Libyan bases where the Corps is present. Washington’s concern over that presence is what gives Saddam his card. The US administration is pressing the east to cut its reliance on the Russians, and Saddam presents himself as the man who can do it. All that remains to complete the picture is for Ankara not to stand in his way.

The Pakistani mediation shows the frame he operates in. In July, two sources from the eastern and western governments told Al Manassa that Islamabad had begun mediating between the two camps, in parallel with a broader US effort. The proposed plan envisages a 36-month transitional period in which Dbeibah remains prime minister, and Saddam heads the Presidential Council.

A test for the Egypt–Turkey thaw

Ankara is not the only party talking to both camps. Cairo, the east’s traditional ally, has opened its own channels to the west. General Intelligence chief Hassan Rashad visited Tripoli in June and met Dbeibah. At the end of July, El-Sisi received Dbeibah in El Alamein, and the two agreed to step up consultation and discussed cooperation on electricity, energy and infrastructure. Less than three weeks later, El-Sisi received Khalifa Haftar with his sons Khaled and Belqasem.

The similarity in the Egyptian and Turkish moves does not erase the difference in what each is betting on. Abdelatty met Fidan in Baghdad just three days before the vote. The Egyptian foreign ministry spokesperson said the minister had stressed, on Libya, support for the political process, an end to the division and the unification of national institutions.

But while Ankara was trading expressions of support with Cairo for unifying institutions, it was pursuing its separate track with the eastern camp, an issue Cairo sees as bearing directly on its national security. That is why the vote is seen as a test of how durable the Egypt–Turkey thaw is.

The test is taking place inside a wider web of ties, however. Egypt and Turkey belong to the regional quartet “R-4,” with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, a coordination framework for the four countries’ foreign ministers. The ministers met recently in New York and are expected, “in theory,” to meet again in Istanbul in a few days. That makes it likely, in the source’s estimate, that Cairo and Ankara will try to contain the fallout. 

In practice, that means handling the bilateral issue, and whatever differences come with it, without letting it affect their regional cooperation, and without Cairo giving up its coordination with Athens and Nicosia, despite differences beneath the surface that run from Libya to Ethiopia.

Egypt’s statement followed that line. It is firm in its legal rejection of the memorandum and of any measures “any party” builds on it, but it levels no direct criticism at Turkey. “In the end, the ratification was a decision by our ‘friends’ in the east, and Libya cannot be blamed for it,” the source said. He even believes Saddam’s position and recent calculations will not necessarily lead to hostility with Egypt, but that they put the bilateral relationship in a different frame, since Haftar’s son now moves and negotiates with regional and international powers “according to his own direct personal calculations and ambitions.”

More important, the equation that has governed Libya for years, an east backed by Cairo and a west backed by Ankara, is wearing away.

(*) A version of this article first appeared in Arabic on Al Manassa, dated Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.