TURKEY'S increasing involvement in the Libyan conflict must be a cause for international concern. There are strong grounds to believe that not only has Ankara been supplying weaponry to the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Tripoli government of Fayez Al-Serraj but has also sent mercenaries, at the very least to operate attack drones it has provided. A week ago, an air strike on the Libyan National Army (LNA) base at Jufra destroyed two Ilyushin transport aircraft. As with the LNA's loss of its key Ghariyan forward base for its assault of Tripoli, this attack appears to have caught it completely unprepared. This highlights one of the tragedies of this conflict which is that neither of the Libyan rivals has the proper discipline and organization to prevail quickly over the other. Thus LNA commander General Khalifa Hafter's drive to take the capital is now in its fifth month. Launched with confident predictions of an early victory, the failure to overcome a rag-tag bunch of MB militias is a clear demonstration that few of the formations within Hafter's forces have proper training and effective command and control. There are unconfirmed reports that some Turks were killed when, in response to the Jufra air strike, the LNA launch an air attack on an airbase in Misrata. If Turkish military personnel are indeed on the ground, many people, including Turks, will consider this another example of dangerous adventurism by their autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Here is a leader who is perfectly content to champion the MB which he must know as well as anyone is the political face of Islamist terrorism. Yet here is also a leader who has turned a blind eye to China's treatment of its Muslim Uighurs and is even this week preparing to send back to Beijing Uighur activists who have sought asylum in Turkey. During his visit last month to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Erdogan refused to raise the plight of the Uighur. He was more interested in courting Chinese investment by becoming part of Xi's Belt and Road initiative. But double standards do not appear to bother the Turkish leader. He may however run up against a problem with his now close Russian ally Vladimir Putin. Officially Moscow is sitting on the fence over Libya, even last year launching its own attempt to play honest broker between the two sides. Unofficially, the Russians recognize in Hafter a potential Libyan leader who can unite the country and clear out Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) and its allied thugs from Libya. Turkey's armed forces, which are part of NATO, are currently integrating Russian S-400 missiles into their air defenses, in defiance of warnings from President Trump and his other NATO allies. Hafter has now vowed to take Tripoli within 12 days, before Eid Al-Adha. This seems unlikely. His failure to fight his way into Tripoli makes clear that a negotiated settlement is the only way to end the carnage and misery gripping all Libyans. The UN's local body UNSMIL has tried repeatedly to bring the two sides together. Unfortunately a direct intervention by Turkey is only going to make that task a great deal more difficult. It is also going to give comfort to the terrorists militias fighting for the UN-recognized Serraj and also lurking in the Libyan desert where they are regrouping while Libyans are busy fighting each other.
