Pro-government Turkish daily Daily Sabah claims Greece is “defeated” by the Turkish-Libyan memorandum, citing Greek MPs

Turkey’s pro-government daily Daily Sabah presents the approval of the illegal Turkish-Libyan memorandum by Libya’s House of Representatives as a political defeat for Athens and a rise for Ankara in the Mediterranean. In a Monday, October 26 article headlined “Türkiye rises in Med with Libya deal, Greece ‘defeated’”, the paper claims that the approval, seven years after the signing, “shook” Greece and opens a new chapter in Turkish-Libyan relations.

The paper writes that Athens has opposed the memorandum for years out of fear that Turkey will gain greater influence in the Mediterranean, and that it sees Turkey as a “historical rival” just as Ankara, it claims, seeks rapprochement. It adds that the agreement could further complicate the two countries’ dispute over maritime zones in the Aegean. The position of Greece, Cyprus and the European Union is the opposite: the 2019 memorandum ignores the islands, including Crete, and has no legal effect on third countries.

The “defeat” narrative

To support the narrative of a “defeat”, Daily Sabah cites a Greek press report speaking of a defeat “from which it is hard to recover”, as well as statements by two New Democracy MPs. It attributes to Dimitris Kalogeropoulos the phrase “we are in a very difficult position” over the Libyan House’s approval, and to the party’s parliamentary spokesman Dimitris Keridis a reference to a “political defeat”. According to the same article, Keridis’s remarks worried the office of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis more, partly because they come from a professor of international relations who is also the party’s spokesman. It also notes that the opposition speaks of a failure of foreign policy. These are Daily Sabah’s own characterisations of the Greek reports.

A special place in the article is given to Athens’ moves toward Washington. Daily Sabah writes of pressure from the “Greek lobby”, unhappy with the Trump administration’s “seemingly neutral” stance, and mentions a letter from the Hellenic American Leadership Council to Secretary of State Marco Rubio with four requests: a statement that the memorandum has no legal consequences for third countries, support for Greek maritime zones based on the islands, protection of US companies’ surveys from the reactions of Turkey and Libya, and a common position with the EU.

Ankara presents itself as a mediator in Libya

The second half of the article portrays Turkey as a mediator for the unification of Libya. Daily Sabah writes that the defence minister of the Tripoli government, Lt. Gen. Abdulsalam Zubi, and the deputy commander-in-chief of the Libyan National Army, Saddam Haftar, met in Ankara on Friday, October 23 on unifying the Libyan military, with a joint military command in Sirte, under a US initiative. Citing Libyan and Arab media, it describes a plan that suspends until elections the title of “General Commander” held by Khalifa Haftar and creates a “General Army Command Council” co-chaired by Zubi and Saddam Haftar. It also writes that the impasse was overcome when Turkey and the United Arab Emirates assured Haftar that a political agreement would follow, and that the speaker of the Benghazi-based House is expected in Tripoli on October 27 for a three-day visit.

Against the narrative of Turkish ascendancy stands the position of the European Union. Brussels has described the memorandum as null and void, expressing its solidarity with Greece and Cyprus. Athens, for its part, rejected the Libyan House’s vote from the first moment, calling the memorandum spurious, null and void.