A surprise vote brings the Türkiye-Libya memorandum back to the forefront of the conflict: the Eastern Mediterranean faces a new crisis

In the hall of the Libyan House of Representatives in Benghazi, unanimously, on October 20, 2026, what the House itself has rejected since 2020 was approved, which is the maritime memorandum of understanding signed between Turkey and Libya since November 2019, and the vote revived the diplomatic and legal controversy that the memorandum had raised since its signing in Istanbul.

The irony lies in the fact that the Libyan House of Representatives itself had categorically rejected the memorandum of understanding in 2020, and its president at the time, Aguila Saleh, sent a letter to the United Nations declaring it “null and void,” and then the House itself voted unanimously to adopt it and cancel the two previous rejection decisions.

The approval of the House of Representatives in eastern Libya also angered the European Union, describing it as “violating the sovereign rights of other countries, inconsistent with the law of the sea, and considered null and void.”

Israel also condemned it, saying it "violates the sovereign rights of our allies in the region."

As for Türkiye, its Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, commenting on the memorandum of understanding, said: “This is a completely legitimate agreement, legally and legislatively, and there is no need to argue about it.”

Turkish President Erdogan said before his parliamentary bloc that he "hopes that this important decision will be useful," while the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement welcoming the ratification, stressing that the memorandum "protects the mutual rights and interests of the two countries in accordance with international law and the principle of fairness."

Analysts believe that the vote may revive the competition for energy resources worth billions under the bottom of the Eastern Mediterranean, as every coordinate in the memorandum of understanding may mean, in return, a gas field, and every border line is a potential pipeline, which makes the Eastern Mediterranean today an arena of competition for energy that is extremely important for Europe, which seeks to break free from dependence on Russian gas.

The memorandum of understanding was signed on November 27, 2019 in Istanbul between Türkiye and the Libyan Government of National Accord. It relates to the definition of “marine areas under jurisdiction” between the two countries in the Mediterranean Sea, and includes the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone.

This falls within the Turkish "Blue Homeland" principle. The Council’s deputy rapporteur, Mohamed Tamer, says that the ratification was the result of cumulative work, linked to the growing role of Saddam Haftar, the eastern Turkish-Libyan strategic rapprochement, and an American deal to unify the two authorities.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry condemned the ratification and considered it “completely null and void,” stressing its contradiction with the Egyptian-Greek agreement of 2020 and its interference with the Egyptian continental shelf. The Greek Foreign Ministry also described the ratification as “does not change the illegal nature of the memorandum.”