Libya's parliament has unanimously approved a controversial maritime agreement with Turkey, reversing years of opposition and reigniting a regional dispute over territorial waters, energy resources and political influence in the eastern Mediterranean.

The vote on Tuesday by Libya's eastern-based House of Representatives marked a significant shift in the country's divided political landscape, bringing rival authorities in Tripoli and Benghazi into agreement on a deal first signed in 2019.

But the decision has drawn strong objections from Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, the European Union and Israel, which have challenged the agreement's legitimacy and its implications for maritime sovereignty.

Turkey has rejected the criticism, insisting that the agreement is lawful and protects the rights of both countries.

The dispute goes beyond maritime boundaries, touching on competition for offshore gas, Turkey's growing influence in Libya and the shifting alliances of regional powers.

So what does the agreement involve, why has it caused such controversy, and what happens next?

What is the Libya-Turkey maritime agreement?

The agreement was signed on 27 November 2019 by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fayez al-Sarraj, then head of Libya's internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).

It establishes maritime jurisdiction zones between Libya and Turkey across the eastern Mediterranean, giving both countries a basis to claim rights over areas believed to contain potentially valuable oil and gas resources.

The deal was signed during Libya's civil war, when Turkey was providing military support to the Tripoli-based government against an offensive by forces loyal to eastern commander Khalifa Haftar.

Turkey subsequently deployed drones and military advisers to help repel Haftar's assault on the capital.

At the time, Libya's eastern-based House of Representatives, which supported Haftar, rejected the agreement.

However, on Tuesday, the parliament unanimously voted to ratify the deal, reversing its previous position.

The decision was welcomed by Libya's Government of National Unity, Presidential Council and High Council of State, as well as Ankara.

Why are Egypt, Greece and the EU opposed?

The agreement has faced longstanding opposition from several eastern Mediterranean countries that argue it infringes on their maritime rights.

Greece maintains that Turkey and Libya do not have opposite or adjacent coastlines that would justify the maritime boundary established under the deal.

Athens argues that the agreement disregards the maritime rights of Greek islands, including Crete, Rhodes and Karpathos.

The Greek foreign ministry has warned that it will take appropriate measures to defend the country's sovereign rights and has raised the issue with the UN Security Council.

Egypt has also rejected the ratification, arguing that the agreement encroaches on its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf.

Cairo's foreign ministry said the deal "constitutes a clear infringement upon Egypt's sovereign rights within its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf", insisting that Libya's parliamentary approval has no legal consequences for Egypt.

The European Union has similarly reaffirmed its opposition.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa said in a joint statement that the agreement infringes on the sovereign rights of third countries and is incompatible with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The bloc reiterated its support for Greece and Cyprus, both EU member states.

Turkey, which is not a party to UNCLOS, rejects these objections.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan described the agreement as "entirely legitimate", while Omer Celik, spokesperson for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), argued that it rested on strong legal foundations.

The dispute also has implications for the planned Great Sea Interconnector, a subsea electricity cable intended to connect Greece and Cyprus, and eventually Israel.

The project, estimated to cost approximately $2.1 billion, has already encountered delays linked to maritime disagreements between Greece and Turkey.

Why is the agreement important for oil and gas?

The eastern Mediterranean has become an increasingly important region for energy exploration, with competing maritime claims affecting access to potential offshore oil and gas reserves.

The Libya-Turkey agreement defines maritime economic zones and creates a framework for exploring natural resources, including hydrocarbons.

Neither country has announced proven reserves in the maritime areas covered by the deal.

However, a 2021 assessment by the US Geological Survey estimated that the wider eastern Mediterranean region contained an average of 286.2 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable conventional natural gas resources.

Energy cooperation between Ankara and Tripoli has continued despite the political dispute.

In October 2022, Turkey and Libya's Government of National Unity signed a separate hydrocarbons cooperation agreement covering scientific, technical, legal and commercial collaboration.

In June 2025, Libya's National Oil Corporation and Turkish Petroleum signed a memorandum of understanding to conduct geological and geophysical studies in four offshore areas.

The arrangement included discussions over a two-dimensional seismic survey covering 10,000 kilometres.

For Libya, offshore exploration could attract investment and diversify energy revenues beyond its existing production of approximately 1.4 million barrels of oil per day and 72 million cubic metres of natural gas daily.

For Turkey, the deal could strengthen its position in the eastern Mediterranean energy sector and support efforts to reduce its dependence on imported energy.

However, the existence of a maritime agreement does not guarantee commercially viable discoveries or immediate production.

Why has eastern Libya changed its position?

The parliamentary reversal reflects significant changes in Libya's internal politics and Turkey's relations with the country's eastern leadership.

When the agreement was first signed, Ankara was supporting the Tripoli government against Haftar's forces.

Since then, Turkey has worked to improve relations with the eastern authorities, including Haftar and his son Saddam, the deputy commander of the Libyan National Army.

In July, Ankara and the eastern military leadership reportedly reached agreements involving military facilities, surveillance systems and training programmes.

The parliamentary vote also followed a change in leadership.

On 6 October, Al-Salhin Abdelnabi al-Obeidi replaced Aguila Saleh as speaker of the House of Representatives after more than 12 years.

Saleh, who was considered close to Cairo, had long resisted ratifying the agreement.

His successor, who previously chaired the Libyan-Turkish parliamentary friendship committee, oversaw its approval as one of his first major decisions.

Youssef Essaied, an academic and researcher specialising in oil and energy economics, told The New Arab that the timing of the vote was linked to broader political developments, including US-backed efforts to unify Libya's rival authorities.

He pointed to the role of Massad Boulos, US President Donald Trump's adviser, in attempting to bring together the rival administrations in Tripoli and Benghazi.

The shift suggests that Ankara's influence now extends beyond its traditional allies in western Libya.

Does this mean Libya's rival authorities are uniting?

Not necessarily. The approval is significant because both Libya's rival centres of power now support the maritime agreement. However, the country's deeper political divisions remain unresolved.

Libya continues to have competing authorities, while disputes over control of the national budget, armed forces and electoral institutions remain central obstacles to political reunification.

The agreement therefore represents a notable area of cooperation between rival political camps rather than evidence of a comprehensive political settlement.

What happens next?

Despite parliamentary ratification, implementing the agreement could take years and face substantial legal, political and economic obstacles.

Essaied told The New Arab that the agreement was not an operational contract and that commercial energy production would require extensive geological surveys, exploration, financial assessments and negotiations.

He warned that Libya's political instability and unresolved maritime disputes could discourage international investment.

Companies may be reluctant to invest in offshore projects exposed to legal challenges from Greece or Egypt, particularly where competing sovereignty claims remain unresolved.

Essaied also highlighted concerns about corruption, weak oversight and the need for transparent management of Libya's energy resources.

Beyond the economic challenges, there is a risk that exploration activities in contested waters could provoke further tensions.

In August 2020, Turkey deployed the seismic survey vessel Oruç Reis to waters claimed by Greece, bringing the two NATO members close to military confrontation.

For now, the ratification represents a diplomatic gain for Ankara and a significant change in eastern Libya's position.

On Sunday, Egypt announced that it would provide support to Saudi Arabia amid its ongoing war against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebel group, which controls most of northern Yemen.

The decision required authorisation from Egypt’s parliament, which usually votes according to government directives. Parliament, however, decided to delay the vote, in what may be a sign of reluctance by the Egyptian state to get involved.

It is not yet clear what form Egypt’s support will take, and it is likely to be only “defensive”, focused mostly on the interception of Houthi missiles and drones and the protection of shipping through the Red Sea.

However, the prospective intervention has already brought back memories of Egypt’s disastrous involvement in the 1962-1970 civil war in what was then North Yemen.

Key figures associated with the Houthi movement have warned Egypt against intervening.

Abdul Qader Mortada, the president of the Houthis’ National Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs, said in a post on X that Egypt’s 1962 intervention in Yemen had led to its disastrous defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and that if it were to get involved again, that would also embolden Israel’s expansionist ambitions across the region.

Israel, which is engaged in wars in Lebanon, Iran and Gaza and aggressive military activity in Syria, offered Saudi Arabia “assistance” in the conflict with Yemen’s Houthis, but this has reportedly been rejected by Riyadh.

Egypt’s bitter memories of intervening in Yemen

When Egypt first intervened in Yemen in 1962, the Arab World split into two camps, amid the Cold War taking place in the wider world. On the one hand were the pro-Western monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan. On the other were those exemplified above all by President Gamal Abdul Nasser’s Egypt, which espoused a pan-Arabist and socialist ideology and was friendly to the Soviet Union.

Egypt, however, had suffered a series of setbacks across the region. In 1961, the United Arab Republic it had formed with Syria broke up, dashing the hopes for a pan-Arab union many people in the region wished for at the time, while strengthening the position of Egypt’s adversaries.

After the 14 July 1958 coup which overthrew the Iraqi monarchy, Egypt hoped that it would gain a new ally, but Iraq’s new leader Abdul Karim Qasim kept his distance from Nasser and his pan-Arab nationalist ideology. Egypt therefore was facing isolation in the Arab World.

However, when army officers in what was then North Yemen, led by Nasser adherent Abdullah Sallal, overthrew Yemen’s new Imam Muhammad al-Badr, who had only taken power one week previously, Egypt saw a chance to extend its influence in the Arab world, while curtailing that of Saudi Arabia, its chief rival at the time.

Yemen was at the time seen as one of the most backward countries in the Arab world. Its rulers, the Imams, held near-absolute political as well as religious power. While Egypt had maintained relatively good relations with the Imams under Nasser, Egyptian views of the country were marked by contempt.

Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, the editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram, who was seen as Nasser’s leading propagandist, wrote in reference to the country, “while some of the Arabs live in the twentieth century, others find themselves still existing in the conditions of the thirteenth century”.

The army coup which overthrew the Imamate and declared a republic was seen as a revolution against “subservience, backwardness and tyranny” with the aim of building an “emancipated modern republic” according to the Egyptian state-owned newspaper Al-Jumhuriya.

Vietnam on the Red Sea

However, these simplistic views belied a much more complex reality. Sallal’s coup was bloody, with many monarchist officials executed without trial. Imam Muhammad al-Badr managed to escape Sana’a despite initial reports of his death.

While the coup did have some popular support in North Yemen, particularly in the old capital Taiz and the southern provinces, Imam Muhammad, with crucial support from Saudi Arabia, managed to rally northern tribes to his cause.

Saudi Arabia’s assistance to the Imam spurred an Egyptian decision to intervene militarily. Any abandonment of the “revolution” in Yemen would have been seen as a major setback to “progressive” forces in the Arab world.

Within two months, 15,000 Egyptian troops were in Yemen, and their number would increase to 70,000 by late 1965.

Egypt poured troops, money and resources into a war it could not win. While Saudi Arabia was its main opponent, ironically it was in a similar position to the one that Riyadh found itself in after it decided to intervene against the Houthis in 2015.

The result was a disaster, caused by what Adeed Dawisha called in a 1975 academic paper Egypt’s “almost total ignorance of the social and political conditions of Yemen”.

More than 10,000 Egyptian troops were killed, and Egypt was beset by massive war debts, but Nasser couldn’t afford the loss of face that would come with withdrawal.

Egypt even used chemical weapons in the conflict, killing an estimated 1,500 people. The conflict soon became known as “Egypt’s Vietnam”.

Its involvement in the Yemen war was one of the key causes of its humiliating defeat by Israel in 1967, and it was forced to withdraw from Yemen after that. The North Yemen Civil War kept going for three more years after that, ending with the victory of republican forces.

Parallels with today

Today Egypt finds itself contemplating intervention in Yemen again (albeit in a limited form) on the same side as Saudi Arabia, which opposed it and did so much to curtail its regional influence in the previous Yemen war.

Arguably, Saudi Arabia made many of the same mistakes Egypt did in the 1960s, underestimating the tenacity and ability of its opponents to resist it and the regional dynamics involved.

Saudi Arabia’s 2015 intervention against the Houthis was motivated by fear of being surrounded by the growing regional influence of Iran at the time.

Its involvement was – at least partially - responsible for what the UN previously described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and it was unable to dislodge the Houthis from the Yemeni capital Sana’a and their northern strongholds.

After the Yemen conflict reignited last September, the US refused to support Saudi Arabia militarily.

Saudi Arabia has looked for other allies almost everywhere, turning to Turkey and Pakistan, its allies in the Mecca Defence Pact, who initially seemed reluctant to get involved.

Egypt’s reliance today on Saudi aid and investment and its concerns over the Houthis’ presence on the Red Sea are perhaps the key drivers for its potential intervention in Yemen.

However, its past experience in Yemen has important parallels with today and suggests that both Saudi Arabia’s renewed war in the country – and any Egyptian involvement in it – will be long, complex and unpredictable.