Ankara Deepens Eastern Med, Syrian Reach; CHP Duel Set for June 2

Turkey's defence ministry said it had hosted 501 personnel from both of Libya's rival armies at its Efes 2026 exercises -- the first time soldiers from the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity and Khalifa Haftar's Benghazi-based Government of National Stability had taken part together in a foreign-led drill under one flag. Aya Burweila of the Athens-based Centre for Hellenic and Mediterranean Studies told France 24 the drills could "help facilitate closer cooperation with both sides" and described them as "a huge, practical pivot towards the east" by Ankara. Jalel Harchaoui of the Royal United Services Institute in London said the goal is enforcement of the 2019 Turkey-Tripoli memorandum that delimits a joint exclusive economic zone over a wide stretch of the eastern Mediterranean: "Now, if Ankara wants to enforce it, which it does, it needs to have the Haftar family on board," Harchaoui said, noting Haftar's family controls both the parliament that would ratify the MoU and the eastern coastline involved. The zone is strongly opposed by Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel. Ankara's outreach is paired with a stick -- Turkish-made combat drones photographed on southern Egyptian airbases and used in strikes in Sudan against the Haftar-backed Rapid Support Forces, per a New York Times investigation -- and a carrot: in April Turkey delivered a fresh batch of military drones to Haftar's army.

Turkish intelligence simultaneously extended its reach into Syria. Turkish and Syrian intelligence services jointly arrested 10 individuals suspected of ISIL ties in an operation on Syrian territory, security sources said on May 23, with the suspects -- wanted under Interpol Red Notices -- brought to Turkiye. Among them is a figure linked to the 2015 Ankara bombings. The detentions are an indicator of how far Turkish-Syrian intelligence cooperation has moved since the post-Assad transition.

The day's domestic political story sat inside the main opposition party. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, appointed interim chairman of the CHP by an appeals-court ruling, and Ozgur Ozel, elected group chairman by 95 of 96 attending lawmakers, will face off for the first time at the party's June 2 parliamentary group meeting. Ozel retains control of party headquarters and the parliamentary group; the courts have ruled the dispute back into Kilicdaroglu's hands. The June 2 confrontation will set the tone for a party heading into a contested cycle.

Two days earlier, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan unveiled a tax-incentive package: cuts to the corporate rate from the standard 25 percent to 9 percent for manufacturing exporters and 14 percent for other exporting firms, with no flat charge on foreign-source earnings and a 20-year foreign-income exemption layered on top of Turkish citizenship for new residents. The package builds on disinflation: consumer price inflation fell to 31.07 percent in November 2025, the lowest reading in four years. Opposition leaders have argued the policy continues to lean on growth incentives rather than the structural reforms they say are needed to keep inflation falling without re-opening the lira's volatility.