Egypt condemns Turkey decision to allow troop deployment to Libya

Cairo: Egypt strongly condemned on Thursday a vote by Turkey's parliament vote to allow a troop deployment to Libya, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Egypt said any such deployment could "negatively affect the stability of the Mediterranean region" and called on the international community to urgently respond to the move.

The Turkish parliament on Thursday voted 325 to 184 to give President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a one-year mandate to dispatch troops at the request of the government of Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Al Sarraj.

The deployment is expected to augment the defence of Al Sarraj’s Tripoli-based government against forces aligned with rival commander Khalifa Haftar. Turkey’s involvement could complicate international efforts to end the divisions that have roiled the country since the overthrow of strongman Moammar Qaddafi in 2011.

“We’re not intervening in Libya, we are just meeting a request for help from the internationally recognized government there,” Emrullah Isler, Erdogan’s envoy to the fractured nation, told the parliament before the vote. Libya has been under a United Nations arms embargo since 2011.

Haftar is allied with a rival administration based in the eastern city of Tobruk. He already controls most of Libya’s oil facilities, as well as chunks of territory in the country’s east and south.

Turkey aims to salvage billions of dollars of business contracts thrown into limbo by Libya’s protracted conflict, and in return for agreeing to defend Al Sarraj’s administration, it won Libyan backing of a controversial maritime deal affirming Ankara’s claim to rights in the eastern Mediterranean, where it is at loggerheads with Cyprus over natural gas resources.