Libya Parliament Ratifies Turkey Maritime Corridor

Libya’s parliament unanimously approved a maritime agreement with Turkey on Tuesday, establishing a direct economic corridor between the two countries. The vote marks a significant shift in policy and is expected to escalate tensions in the eastern Mediterranean, particularly with Greece, which views the new boundary as an infringement on its sovereign rights.

The relationship between Ankara and Tripoli has evolved rapidly since 2019. At that time, Turkey signed the initial deal with the UN-recognized Government of National Accord in western Libya. The rival government in eastern Libya opposed the arrangement then, but the eastern parliament has now reversed that stance. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry welcomed the recent vote, signaling a consolidation of ties with both major Libyan factions.

The corridor connects Turkey’s southern coast with Libya’s northern coast. Recent discoveries of large oil and gas deposits in the area have raised the stakes. Estimates suggest that natural gas reserves worth several hundred billion US dollars lie under the seabed. Ankara and Tripoli aim to secure their economic rights to these resources and exploit them jointly through this new framework.

The planned corridor ignores several Greek islands, including Crete, Karpathos, and Rhodes. Athens maintains that it holds a comprehensive exclusive economic zone around these territories. Greece’s Foreign Ministry announced its firm opposition on X, noting that the European Union has called the memorandum null and void. The EU argues that the deal violates the sovereign rights of third states and is inconsistent with the Law of the Sea.

Kaja Kallas, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, echoed this sentiment. She stated that she raised the issue regarding the Libyan vote and stressed that it infringes upon the sovereign rights of third states. The core of the dispute lies in competing interpretations of maritime law. Greece relies on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which grants inhabited islands the same economic zone rights as mainland territory. It also points to a 2022 International Court of Justice ruling that requires fair demarcation of overlapping interests.

Turkey argues that Mediterranean geography deserves special weight in these calculations. It contends that if every small Greek island near the Turkish and Cypriot coasts received a full economic zone, Turkey would be largely cut off from the open sea. Because Ankara never signed the convention, it does not accept arbitration by a UN tribunal. Legal experts continue to disagree on what a fair division would look like in this complex region.

The political landscape in Libya has changed considerably since the civil war of 2019. Turkey intervened militarily to support the Tripoli government against eastern General Khalifa Hifter. Since then, a Turkish charm offensive has brought a rapprochement with Hifter’s camp. Turkish firms have won multi-billion dollar reconstruction contracts, and the state oil company TPAO is working with Libya’s National Oil Corporation on seismic surveys. Turkey also supplies weapons and training to Hifter’s forces. The new agreement also threatens the planned EastMed pipeline, which was meant to carry gas from Israel and Cyprus through Greece to bolster EU energy security. Turkey argues that such projects on its claimed continental shelf require its consent. Over the long term, the region could split into two blocs: a Turkey-Libya axis and an EU-supported grouping of Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, and Israel.