Libya | Turkey Cries "Men Dakka Dukka"

Turkey walked out after eastern Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar joined a meeting on the conference’s sidelines with his UN-backed rival Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj and other leaders, but not Turkey. Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, UN envoy Ghassan Salame, European Council President Donald Tusk and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also attended the Sarraj-Haftar meeting, hosted by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte ahead of roundtable talks, which were to have included Turkey.

The Haftar camp regularly accuses Turkey and Qatar of militarily and financially backing his rivals, including Islamists.

Mavi Boncuk | 


Libya | Turkey Cries "Men Dakka Dukka"

Turkey has withdrawn from a two-day summit about Libya that is being held in Italy with “deep disappointment”, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay told reporters on Tuesday, objecting to what he said was Ankara’s exclusion from some of the talks.

“Any meeting which excludes Turkey would prove to be counter-productive for the solution of this problem,” Oktay said. He spoke from Italy’s Palermo, where a two-day Libya summit is being held to discuss a U.N. peace plan to stabilize the North African country, in turmoil since 2011.

Speaking to reporters, Fuat Oktay said: “The international community, unfortunately, could not reach a consensus this morning. Some [countries] have unilaterally interfered in the process by misusing the meeting being hosted by Italy.”

“As long as some countries continue crippling the process in the direction of its own benefits, stability cannot be provided in Libya,” he added, without naming any country. 

Oktay said that it was a very “misleading” and “harming” stance that an unofficial meeting was held between some sides this morning and these sides were being represented as primary actors in the Mediterranean region. 

“On the contrary, we are open to wide-range dialogue with all the actors in Libya and the region,” the vice-president added. 

Key Libyan and international stakeholders met in Palermo, Italy, on November 12 to discuss and, hypothetically, draft a plan to deal with the political crisis in Libya. Main Libyan actors from the east—strongman Khalifa Haftar and president of the House of Representatives (HoR), Ageela Salah—as well as the west—prime minister of the United Nations (UN)-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), Fayez al-Serraj, and head of the High State Council, Khalid al-Mishri—were attending.

Foreign interference in Libya has been criticized by Libyans as well as the international community of Libya watchers since Moammar Gadhafi’s ouster in the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. This criticism is not limited to the Europeans. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have propped up Haftar’s military conquest in the east with funding and weapons, overtly breaking the UN arms embargo that has been in place since February 2011 when the uprisings began.