QuickAssessments

Turkey’s intervention in the Libyan civil conflict in January 2020 turned the tides of the war, enabling the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) to break the 18-month Libyan National Army’s (LNA) siege on Tripoli. The Turkish intervention was based on four main pillars: the deployment of Turkish-made Bayraktar TB-2 drones, electronic warfare (EW) capabilities, air defense systems and two-to-five thousand Syrian mercenaries to support GNA ground forces. Turkish efforts were initially directed at curbing LNA air power and at neutralizing LNA air defenses. LNA air power was dealt with the deployment of radars and Mim-23 Hawk air defense systems at the Mitiga and Misrata airports. The neutralization of the LNA’s air defenses was achieved via Turkey’s innovative, combined use of TB-2 drones and EW systems as an integrated package. This joint application of the two assets, already experimented in Syria, was further developed in Libya and enabled the GNA to achieve complete

Over the last two decades, most of Middle Eastern countries have embarked upon what is called “ neo-authoritarian restructuring ”, namely limited and reversible processes of liberalization aimed to shore up their authoritarian rule: from the overbearing role of the state in the economy to cronyism and neo-patrimonialism, state-society relations have shifted from populist mobilization of the middle and lower strata and inclusive socio-economic agenda to depoliticization of political discourse and the consequent diffusion of pro-reform and “technocratic” agenda. In this sense, elites and middle-classes, instead of being the key actors of political change in favor of more inclusiveness and participation, seem to constitute the pillar upon which regimes have restructured themselves. Cooptation of elites aside, to make things worse is that the only structured and organized opposition is political Islam, a force of conservation dressed up as progressive.