By Theodore Shoebat

Turkey was given rights over natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean on the Libyan coast, causing great concerns for Greece, Israel and Egypt  who fear Turkish encroachment. Now it turns out that Turkey pressured the Libyan government by being its only support against Khalifa Haftar (who is backed by Egypt, Russia and France), thus giving it no choice but to give Turkey drilling rights. As we read in a report from the Jerusalem Post:

it now turns out that Ankara was pressuring Sarraj for a year for the energy and maritime deal. Turkey was the only country really ready to give support.

“Islamists inside Sarraj’s administration” also supported the deal.

TURKEY’S CURRENT regime, which has increasingly jailed tens of thousands of dissidents and suppressed Kurdish civil rights in recent years, has been accused of working with extremists in northern Syria.

ISIS members are often found to have fled to Turkey or used it to transit to Idlib. ISIS leader Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi was found in October 2019 in Syria close to the Turkish border.

ISIS members have even trafficked Yazidi genocide victims to Turkish-occupied Idlib province in Syria. The US has carried out airstrikes against Al-Qaeda, which operates in Turkish-occupied areas of Syria.

It now appears that Turkey will milk Libya economically. The AP report says Ankara has given Tripoli a bill of $1.7 billion for money owed to Turkish companies.