Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was received at the Haftar family compound in Benghazi on Aug. 12, becoming the first Turkish diplomat of his rank to visit eastern Libya in more than a decade, according to reporting by The Media Line. The visit gave Ankara diplomatic access to both the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, where Fidan also met Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, and the eastern institutions controlled by Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army.
Turkish foreign minister visits Benghazi, gaining access to both sides of divided Libya
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was received at the Haftar family compound in Benghazi on Aug. 12, becoming the first Turkish diplomat of his rank to visit eastern Libya in more than a decade, according to reporting by The Media Line. The visit gave Ankara diplomatic access to both the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, where Fidan also met Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, and the eastern institutions controlled by Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army.
Libya has remained divided since the collapse of Moammar Gadhafi's government in 2011. Dbeibah's internationally recognized Government of National Unity controls Tripoli and much of western Libya with Turkish military support, while Haftar's Libyan National Army and allied institutions dominate the east and much of the south. Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia have backed Haftar. A 2020 ceasefire ended his forces' failed campaign to capture Tripoli but did not reunify the country's political, military or economic institutions.
Fidan's Benghazi meetings included Aguila Saleh, speaker of the eastern-based House of Representatives, and Belqasim Haftar, who runs the Libya Development and Reconstruction Fund. After Benghazi, Fidan traveled to El Alamein on Egypt's Mediterranean coast for talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty. Ankara's intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin had previously traveled quietly to Benghazi in 2023, a move Rome's Institute of International Affairs described as the 'true novelty' that shifted Turkey from exclusive Tripoli partner to interlocutor with both halves of the country.
The visit coincided with a period of violence in western Libya. Two days before Fidan's Benghazi visit, Fawzi al-Mansouri, chief of military intelligence for Haftar's Libyan National Army, was killed by a car bomb in Benghazi. In the same week, six drone strikes hit facilities at the Zawiya oil complex, including one that destroyed a gasoline tank containing 4.5 million liters belonging to state fuel distributor Brega Petroleum. General Electric withdrew its engineers from an adjacent 1,300-megawatt power plant, more than 700 megawatts of which was already offline. A drone also hit the South Zawiya electrical substation on Aug. 12, and an overnight cascade of explosions blacked out Tripoli, Zawiya, Sabratha, Surman and Gharyan twice, according to Libya's General Electricity Company and Turkish state news agency Anadolu.
The violence occurred as Washington is pursuing what has been described as Massad Boulos' three-track framework — security integration, political cooperation and unified economic management — reportedly proposing reunification of Libya's rival governments in exchange for American oil investment and the release of frozen Libyan state assets, with elections deferred rather than made a precondition. Boulos, President Trump's senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, laid out the framework in Washington in April, projecting Libyan oil production of 1.6 million barrels a day in the short term and 2 million to 3 million by the end of the decade. Chevron won a Sirte Basin contract in February and Exxon Mobil followed with an agreement covering four offshore blocks. Before the US and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, more than 20 million barrels a day transited the Strait of Hormuz; second-quarter 2026 flows averaged 4.9 million barrels a day as the war disrupted that traffic, making Libyan crude one of Washington's few near-term alternatives.
Under the reported arrangement, Saddam Haftar — described as being groomed as his father's political successor and already commanding eastern security forces — would head a new presidential council, while Dbeibah or his nephew Ibrahim would retain the premiership. National elections would be deferred to a later, unspecified stage. Pakistan has separately agreed to sell more than $4 billion in military equipment to Haftar's forces and has begun mediating between Libya's rival power centers with US and Saudi backing. Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia consult through the Regional Four, or R4, an emerging grouping formed to coordinate responses to regional crises.
The 2019 Turkey-Libya maritime delimitation agreement remains a source of regional tension. Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel reject the agreement as disregarding their maritime rights. The US, Greece, Cyprus and Israel established the Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center at Rice University in Houston in June to promote energy development, infrastructure security and regional cooperation. Ankara's outreach to eastern Libya could, according to analysis cited in the article, make opposition there to the 2019 agreement less certain.
- The source does not state whether Khalifa Haftar or Saddam Haftar personally met with Fidan during the Benghazi visit, or which members of the Haftar family were present.
- The source does not state whether the Haftar-aligned eastern government issued any public statement about Fidan's visit or its outcome.
- The source does not state whether the United Arab Emirates, which backed Haftar for a decade, has commented on Fidan's Benghazi visit specifically.
- The source does not state whether any party has claimed responsibility for the Zawiya drone strikes or the assassination of Fawzi al-Mansouri.
- The source does not state whether Massad Boulos or other US officials have formally responded to Fidan's shuttle or the concurrent violence in Libya.
- The source does not establish whether the reported Boulos three-track framework has been publicly confirmed by the US government or remains based solely on reporting.
Read the original at The Jerusalem Post