News MENA Egypt plan to redraw East Mediterranean map with Libya's Khalifa Haftar, as Turkey watches nervously Relations between Egypt and Turkey have improved significantly over the past three years, following a decade of tensions. MENA

News  MENA

Egypt plan to redraw East Mediterranean map with Libya's Khalifa Haftar, as Turkey watches nervously

Relations between Egypt and Turkey have improved significantly over the past three years, following a decade of tensions.

MENA

6 min read

Read Mode

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (R) meets with the leader of the armed forces in eastern Libya, Khalifa Belqasim Haftar (L) to discuss bilateral relations and regional issues in Cairo, Egypt, on 8 December 2025. [Photo by Egyptian Presidency] 

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (R) meets with the leader of the armed forces in eastern Libya, Khalifa Belqasim Haftar (L) to discuss bilateral relations and regional issues in Cairo, Egypt, on 8 December 2025. [Photo by Egyptian Presidency]

Egypt and eastern Libyan authorities have agreed to begin delineating their maritime boundaries, amid concerns that the move may renew tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly with Turkey.

The planned agreements were announced in Cairo on 8 December after a meeting between Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Libyan National Army (LNA) Commander Khalifa Haftar, whose forces control most of eastern and southern Libya.

If finalised, specialists in the Egyptian capital argue, the agreement will define the exclusive economic zones of the two countries and, consequently, give them the freedom to negotiate deals with international energy companies for the exploration of hydrocarbons, especially natural gas, each within its respective boundary.

"Egypt can't invite energy companies to explore hydrocarbons in the area in the absence of a deal that defines its exclusive economic zone in specific terms," Salah Hafez, the former deputy head of the Petroleum Authority, the executive arm of the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, said to The New Arab.

"Energy companies, which invest billions of dollars in the search for minerals, only do business in areas where there are neither legal nor military challenges to the reclamation of their investments," he added.

Hafez noted that the potential discovery of additional hydrocarbon reserves in the Mediterranean would benefit Egypt's economy and help the country achieve its goal of becoming a regional energy hub.

Egypt is urgently seeking additional resources to meet its energy needs, particularly as its population grows and energy demand increases.

The populous Arab country's scramble for energy, especially natural gas, which powers most of its electricity plants, is also fuelled by its ambitious industrial and export expansion plans.

Within a decade and a half, Egypt moved from a net natural gas importer to a net exporter, then back to a net importer.

This led it to repeatedly seek imports in the international energy market to bridge the production-consumption gap and prevent its electricity plants from failing.

Nevertheless, Egypt's dependence on imports has proved to be politically costly, particularly with Israel, its leading gas supplier in the past few years, conditioning its gas exports on Egyptian leniency towards a series of far-reaching files, including—among many others—Israel's ambitions to depopulate Gaza of its Palestinian population and Egypt's staunch opposition to such a scenario.

Challenging the Turkish deal

Egypt has been an unwavering backer of the LNA since its emergence in the shadows of the turmoil that reigned over Libya in the aftermath of the downfall of the regime of longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

In offering support to the LNA, Cairo was mainly in search of a powerful ally that could stabilise the Libyan side of the shared border and prevent the chaos that was rife in the neighbouring country from seeping into Egypt's vast Western Desert, which covers almost two thirds of Egypt's land area, constituting a region nearly the size of the State of Texas in the US.

Sisi's talks with Field Marshal Haftar in Cairo on December 8 covered a wide range of issues of mutual concern, including the situation in neighbouring Sudan and Libya's political transition.

Nonetheless, the potential signing of an agreement delimiting the maritime boundaries between Egypt and Libya stood out as one of the most critical items in the talks.

Libya remains the only country with which Egypt has not yet signed a maritime boundary delimitation agreement.

Egypt signed a deal with Cyprus in 2003, another one with Saudi Arabia in 2016 and a third with Greece in 2020.

However, a potential deal with Libya will likely conflict with another agreement signed in 2019 by the western Libyan government and Turkey.

When it was signed, the Turkish-western Libyan delimitation agreement provoked the ire of both Egypt and Greece, prompting the two countries not to recognise it and highlighting hydrocarbon-centred regional conflicts and proxy wars.

The fear now is that the continental shelf given to Turkey by the 2019 deal would be encroached on by the potential Egypt-eastern Libya agreement, thus opening the door for a renewed legal tug-of-war in the region, one that might morph into a military confrontation, observers said.

"Egypt didn't recognise the 2019 maritime boundary deal between Turkey and the western Libyan government because the deal infringes on Egypt's exclusive economic zone," Egyptian political analyst Abdel Sattar Heteita said.

He referred to what he described as "understanding" among European states regarding Egypt's position and rights in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Navigating new relations

Relations between Egypt and Turkey have improved significantly over the past three years, following a decade of tensions, with ideological conflicts and the pursuit of Eastern Mediterranean resources at the centre of these matters.

To tighten the noose around Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean and rein in its regional ambitions, Egypt nourished close relations with Greece, a regional nemesis of Turkey, and Cyprus.

The three states formed an apparent alliance to counter what they viewed as Turkish ambitions of regional domination, particularly regarding Eastern Mediterranean resources.

Turkey's 2019 delimitation deal with the western Libyan government, which it courted for years and continues to do so, was Ankara's attempt to break free of the siege slapped around it in the region by Greece, Egypt and Cyprus.

Over the past period, Turkey has repeatedly sought to woo Egypt out of its alliance with the two countries, promising it a larger continental shelf than that granted in the maritime boundary demarcation deals with Greece and Cyprus, but to no avail.

Meanwhile, improving relations between Cairo and Ankara is helping to calm regional tensions.

The two capitals now cooperate on numerous regional files, including in Sudan, Gaza and Libya itself. They also foster close cooperation across the economic and military sectors, with Turkish firms helping Egypt advance its military industry, particularly in the manufacture of unmanned aerial vehicles.

In a way, this growing cooperation highlights the merits of reconciliation and the demerits of conflict, analysts in both countries said.

However, the same analysts fear that a potential delimitation deal between Egypt and the eastern Libyan government could reignite longstanding tensions and rivalries over regional resources.

Turkish analysts view Cairo and Ankara as needing to maintain a high level of coordination in the coming period to prevent their longstanding animosities from resurfacing.

"It is very important for the two countries to coordinate with each other now more than ever to protect their own interests in the region," Turkish political analyst Feras Ridwan Oğlu told TNA.

He cast doubt on Field Marshal Haftar's ability to sign international agreements in his capacity as commander of the Libyan Army.

"In any case, Egypt and Turkey share interests and I believe the two countries are keen to keep their current détente alive," he added.