Watch: Will the Turkish invasion of Libya lead to Syrian-Saudi rapprochement?

After the fall of Gaddafi, the North African country was divided between rival governments in the east and west, and among multiple armed groups, including ISIS, competing for quotas of power, control of the country and its wealth.

Of course, the mainstream media; the trumpets of NATO claim the war was necessary to protect the civilians from an imminent slaughtering by Qaddafi and to export democracy and human rights there.

However, one of the over 3,000 Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department in December 2016 contains damning evidence that Libya was purposely destroyed by NATO and Qaddafi was brutally killed by the Islamists because France wanted to maintain their financial stranglehold on African Nations. The NATO war was not for the protection of the people, but instead, it was to thwart Gaddafi’s attempt to create a gold-backed African currency to compete with the Western central banking monopoly.

After 9 years of war and conflict among the rival groups supported by different external powers, the Libyan crisis is heading towards new horizons, where neo-Ottoman Erdogan is increasing its interference and even planning to send troops to Libya. Additionally, Erdogan has already sent some parts of his terrorist proxy militants from Syria to Libya. We always wondered where the terrorists of Idlib will go after being bussed from different Syrian cities to Idlib. Now, some of them are being exported to Libya.

But what does Turkey want from Libya? Libya is a country rich in oil and gas reserves that borders important Mediterranean trade routes. A lot of Turkish companies were already active in Libya under Ghaddafi. Among other things, Turkish companies were also involved in numerous lucrative construction projects in Libya. Precise figures aren’t available, but the volume of investment is believed to have totalled several billion US dollars. When the conflict between the Turkish-Qatari-NATO backed Government of National Accord (GNA) and the Russian-Saudi backed general Haftar broke out, many of these construction projects were put on ice, and Turkish companies working in Libya lost a great deal of money as a result. Consequently, the more areas Haftar seizes from GNA, the smaller the chances the Turkish companies will see their money again¹. So, the scramble for gas in the eastern Mediterranean underlies why Ankara is sending forces into a conflict that has nothing to do with Turkish national security².

The increased Turkish involvement in Libya is alarming for Egypt, which is completely logical from a geopolitical and ideological perspectives. Being one of the regional powers in the region, the last thing Egypt wants to see is a hostile expansion in its neighbourhood. And let’s not forget that Turkey was one of the main supporters of the ousted Egyptian President Morsi. Thus, Ankara’s policy is hostile towards the current President Sisi and supportive to his main opponent, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is considered a terrorist group in Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

In this complicated situation, Saudi Arabia supports Morsi and one of many other crises in the region, there is a mutual ground between Saudi Arabia and Syria; mainly in countering the Muslim brotherhood and stopping the expansion of Turkey and Syria and Libya. So, will Mohammad Bin Salman reverse the policy towards Assad and open a new page with Syria? Regional developments and secret diplomatic and security meetings indicate that there is an attempt to revive the relations between Damascus and Riyadh. Only recently, Syria’s Al-Watan newspaper reported that the permanent representative of Syria to the UN, Dr Bashar al-Jaafari participated in an event hosted by the Saudi ambassador and that Riyadh is extending its hand to Damascus after 9 years of enmity. But will the relations be friendly? I don’t think so, but anything that serves the interests of Syria and the Syrian people should be welcomed.