Turkey fuels Libya crisis by sending in Syrian fighters

The war in Libya took a dramatic turn with reports of Turkey using Syrian rebels to support its allies in Tripoli. Videos on social media in the past two days claimed to show Syrian fighters on Libyan soil.

The news came as Turkey prepares to send troops to Libya to support the leader of the Government of National Accord, Fayez Al Sarraj.

Turkey’s parliament will vote on the issue on January 8 or 9. If passed, Turkey could send naval forces and troops to the African nation, which has been in turmoil since the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Qaddafi.

A Turkish official and a senior GNA official said rebel groups that fought alongside Turkish forces in northern Syria are expected soon to be sent to support the Tripoli government, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.

Reports emerged that the Mutasem grouping, from the Free Syrian Army, were already in Libya and had begun fighting. Rami Abdulrahman, head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said as many as 500 Turkmen Syrian fighters have already been recruited in Turkey ready to be sent to Libya.

“They are recruiting the fighters from” Syria’s opposition groups, Mr Abdulrahman said.

The rumoured deployment of rebels came days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Turkish parliament would vote on a motion to send troops to Libya to bolster the government in Tripoli against Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army.

Aguila Saleh, leader of Libya’s Parliament, called Mr Erdogan’s move unacceptable, saying it constituted unwanted meddling in the affairs of a friendly country.

A joint statement from Mr Saleh and his Cypriot counterpart, Demetris Syllouris, also reiterated their condemnation of a maritime border agreement that Turkey signed with Libya’s Tripoli-based government as a “flagrant violation of international law that’s devoid of any legal basis”.