Turkey brings both Libyan rival armies into Efes 2026 in pivot to enforce 2019 Mediterranean economic-zone deal

For the first time, soldiers from both of Libya's rival armies took part in a foreign-led international exercise together, the Turkish defence ministry said. According to the ministry, 501 personnel from the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity and the Benghazi-based Government of National Stability joined Turkey's Efes 2026 exercises this week. Ankara has long backed the Tripoli administration; the joint participation extends Turkish engagement to Khalifa Haftar's eastern government, whose Libyan National Army is run as chief of staff by his son Saddam Haftar.

"There needs to be one unified army in Libya, one unified military force," Aya Burweila of the Athens-based Centre for Hellenic and Mediterranean Studies told France 24. "I think these joint exercises help with that. They help facilitate closer cooperation with both sides, and that can only be a good thing." Burweila described the drills as "a huge, practical pivot towards the east" by Turkey with "huge implications for Libya's stability," noting they were not isolated: "It's not just joint military exercises. There are business interests, there are sales of weapons and drones, and so forth." Libya has been divided since 2014.

The motive, according to Jalel Harchaoui of the London-based Royal United Services Institute, is enforcement of a 2019 memorandum of understanding that Turkey signed with Tripoli to delimit a joint exclusive economic zone over a wide swathe 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. He explained that the Haftar family controls both the parliament that would ratify the MoU and the eastern coastline that the zone implicates: "The Haftar family can deliver on two very necessary things: the parliamentary ratification, because the parliament happens to be controlled by the Haftar family, and also the part of the coast that is involved in this arrangement is eastern Libya, not western Libya." The zone, believed to overlay large untapped energy reserves, is strongly opposed by Greece and Cyprus, who say it violates their territorial waters; Egypt and Israel have voiced concerns; and Haftar's own administration -- which has cordial ties with Cairo and Athens -- is itself reluctant. "I think what lots of Libyans feel is: 'this fight is not our fight,'" Burweila added, calling the issue a Turkish priority but not a Libyan one.

The diplomatic outreach is the carrot in an explicit carrot-and-stick policy. Throughout 2025, Ankara courted Haftar and Saddam Haftar with little progress; according to Harchaoui, Turkey then hardened its line over Haftar's late-year military backing of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, with Turkish-made combat drones photographed on southern Egyptian airbases and used in strikes in Sudan, per a New York Times investigation. "This was a new development," Harchaoui said. "It was basically Turkey saying, 'I smiled for most of 2025, and you did nothing for me. And you will have seen two faces. You will have seen the carrot, obviously, but also the stick.'" In April, Turkey delivered a new batch of military drones to Haftar's army, continuing the dual track. The Turkish defence ministry says further joint exercises with both armies are planned -- a stabilisation goal that is now bound up with Ankara's bid to secure shared control over a large stretch of the eastern Mediterranean against the opposition of multiple regional governments.