Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is the epitome of today’s strongman political leader, but his decision to send Turkish troops to Libya may be a step too far. By the time his Libyan gamble sours, as it inevitably will, he will have run out of both luck and friends.
WINCHESTER, UK – Foreign critics of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan deride him as a quasi-dictatorial megalomaniac. But Erdoğan – who was Turkey’s prime minister for 11 years before being elected president in 2014 – is now a reckless gambler, too. In short order, Turkey will send troops to Libya at the request of the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), which has been besieged in Tripoli for the last eight months by the advancing forces of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA).
WINCHESTER, UK – Foreign critics of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan deride him as a quasi-dictatorial megalomaniac. But Erdoğan – who was Turkey’s prime minister for 11 years before being elected president in 2014 – is now a reckless gambler, too. In short order, Turkey will send troops to Libya at the request of the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), which has been besieged in Tripoli for the last eight months by the advancing forces of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA).