The Mediterranean Seabed Has Become a Contest Over Gas, Borders and Allies, and Eastern Libya Has Just Changed Sides on One of Its Most Disputed Maps
In 2020, the parliament that sits in eastern Libya voted unanimously against a maritime agreement with Turkey and cut political ties with Ankara. On Tuesday, the same chamber voted unanimously for the very same agreement. Few reversals in North African politics have been so complete, and few say as much about how quickly alliances in Libya’s long conflict can be rearranged.
The House of Representatives, based in Tobruk and aligned with military commander Khalifa Haftar, approved the memorandum of understanding Turkey signed in November 2019 with Libya’s UN-recognised Government of National Accord, the Tripoli administration at the time. The memorandum delimits maritime jurisdiction areas between the two countries in the Mediterranean Sea. In statements issued in Benghazi, the eastern authorities said lawmakers had also repealed two resolutions from 2020: Resolution No. 1, which rejected the ratification of the two memorandums Libya had signed with Turkey, and Resolution No. 6, which called for political relations with Ankara to be severed.
Lawmaker Aisha al-Tabalqi said specialized committees had presented a full and detailed explanation of the deal’s provisions before the vote. Another member, Tarek al-Jeroushi, was blunt about the likely reaction abroad. “Some countries may be upset by this agreement, but what matters to us is our national interest,” he said, adding that the agreement would strengthen Libya’s position as a political, military and economic partner to key powers.
How Enemies Became Partners
The vote is best read against the war that the 2019 deal helped to decide. In December 2019, Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) had nearly encircled Tripoli and threatened to overrun the government led at the time by Fayez al-Sarraj. Turkey then intervened, sending military advisers and drones that stopped the LNA’s advance and changed the course of the civil war. For eastern Libya, the maritime memorandum was for years a symbol of that defeat and of Ankara’s choice of side.
That hostility has been softening for some time. Since last year, Turkey has built military-to-military contacts with the LNA, including a deal in July to develop military facilities and advanced surveillance systems, and there is now talk of a Turkish military presence in areas that Haftar controls. Tuesday’s vote turns that quiet shift into law. For Ankara, the goal is plain: to keep its influence in Libya whatever political settlement eventually emerges between Tripoli and the east. A memorandum signed by one of Libya’s rival centers of power and now endorsed by the other makes that influence far harder to undo.
Athens Says the Map Is Unlawful
Greece responded within hours. Its foreign ministry said it rejected the decision and that the parliamentary vote did not change the fact that the memorandum remained “illegal, null and void”, contrary to the international law of the sea and an infringement of the sovereign rights of states in the region. Its central legal argument is geographic: Turkey and Libya, Athens said, do not have opposite or adjacent coasts that would provide a lawful basis for delimiting maritime zones between them, and the memorandum disregards Greek islands and their entitlement to maritime zones under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and customary law.
Greece pointed to its own delimitation agreements with Egypt and Italy as evidence of its respect for international law, called on Libya to refrain from actions that undermine stability in the Eastern Mediterranean, and said it had informed partners and allies and would take all appropriate action to safeguard its rights. Cyprus also protested when the deal was signed in 2019. The positions are now set out plainly: Turkey, the Tripoli side that signed the deal, and now the eastern parliament on one side; Greece and its partners on the other.
Cairo’s Quiet Interest
Egypt is the regional actor with the most to weigh. The LNA has long been believed to receive support from Egypt and other regional powers, and it has been at war with forces loyal to Tripoli since the civil war began in 2014. Cairo has its own maritime agreement with Athens, which sits uneasily beside the Turkish-Libyan map. An eastern Libya that now endorses Ankara’s lines puts Egypt in the awkward position of watching a long-time ally on its western border align with a rival framework at sea. How Cairo reacts in the coming days will show whether the shift in Benghazi is a local recalculation or the start of a wider regional realignment.
What the Vote Settles, and What It Does Not
The vote does not draw a single new line on the seabed by itself. Maritime boundaries depend on recognition by neighbors and, where they disagree, on negotiation or adjudication, and Greece has made clear it will recognize nothing. Nor does it end Libya’s internal division: the country still has rival governments and rival institutions, and the House of Representatives functions as an alternative to the legislature in Tripoli rather than as part of a unified state. What the vote does change is the domestic politics of the deal. Until now, opponents could argue that the memorandum was a Tripoli arrangement that half of Libya rejected. That argument is no longer available.
There are practical stakes too. Maritime zones determine who may license exploration for oil and gas, who can patrol which waters, and whose objections carry weight with investors. For Libyans, whose economy depends almost entirely on hydrocarbons, these are not abstract questions. A memorandum now backed by both of the country’s rival camps is likely to be pressed more firmly in future dealings with energy companies and neighboring states.
Whose National Interest?
Tarek al-Jeroushi framed the vote as a defense of Libya’s national interest, and a divided country can gain when its rival camps agree on an external question. But Libya’s choices at sea are still being shaped in large part by foreign patrons, first by Turkey’s intervention in 2019 and now by its courtship of the east. Real self-determination for Libya would mean a unified state negotiating its maritime borders with all its neighbors on its own terms, not rival authorities trading endorsements for military partnerships. Tuesday’s unanimity is a start on one question; the harder work of building a single state that can own such decisions remains undone.
