The Eastern Mediterranean, long a stage for competing territorial claims, ideological rifts, and energy politics, is once again at the epicenter of regional tension. Turkiye’s recent outreach to Libya’s Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and his Tobruk-based administration has unsettled established alignments, deepened maritime disputes, and reopened old wounds between Ankara and Athens. What was once a relatively predictable rivalry has now evolved into a complex web of shifting alliances, economic ambitions, and overlapping military interests – all of which threaten to destabilize the fragile equilibrium of the Mediterranean basin.

Libya’s protracted instability remains a central factor in this unfolding drama. Since the fall of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, the country has fractured into two rival administrations: the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) in the west, backed by Turkiye, and the Tobruk-based House of Representatives in the east, aligned with the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Haftar and supported by Egypt and the UAE.

The division not only fractured Libya’s national identity but also transformed it into a strategic battleground for regional powers. Turkiye, leveraging its support for Tripoli, secured a maritime delimitation agreement in 2019 that dramatically redrew boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean. This pact created a maritime corridor between the two nations’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs), granting Ankara and Tripoli extensive control over gas-rich waters – much to the fury of Greece and Cyprus.

Athens and Nicosia deemed the agreement illegal, arguing that it disregarded the continental shelves of Greek islands such as Crete and Rhodes. In response, Greece collaborated with Egypt and Cyprus to formalize their own EEZ deals and spearheaded the creation of the East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF), later joined by Israel, Jordan, Italy, and France. The EMGF quickly evolved into a counterweight to Turkiye’s assertive “Blue Homeland” (Mavi Vatan) doctrine, which envisions Turkish sovereignty extending across vast swaths of the Mediterranean.

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