Α few days after the unexpected visit of Hakan Fidan to Tripoli, and a few weeks after the announcement by the Turkish Minister of Energy for the activation of the Turkish-Libyan memorandum for exploration by the Turkish company TRAO in the “maritime zones of Libya,” the Administrative Court of Tripoli decided to cancel this Memorandum.

The Memorandum, signed in the autumn of 2022, had led to another crisis with Greece and a diplomatic incident during the visit of Nikos Dendias to the country (where he refused to disembark from the aircraft in order to avoid meeting his counterpart Naïla Mangous who had signed the memorandum). It envisaged the cooperation of the two countries with the participation of the research vessels of the Turkish state company TRAO for the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons in Libya.

It was even considered that this memorandum constituted the “institutional” step for the implementation of the Turkish-Libyan memorandum of 2019 for the “delimitation of maritime zones of jurisdiction” with which an attempt was made to appropriate a large part of the Greek continental shelf and consolidate the so-called by Turkey “Blue Homeland”.

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A group of lawyers had appealed against this memorandum, arguing that the Dbeibah government did not have the authorization to sign international agreements concerning the sovereignty and sovereign rights of the country without the consent of the Parliament. It was also argued that exclusive competences for the exploitation of the country’s natural resources, belonging to the state-owned Libyan oil company, were being granted to a foreign company.

The Court of Appeal had been called upon to review the appeal filed by the Tripoli government against the decision of the Administrative Court in January 2023, which had declared this memorandum void.

The Dbeibah government has not commented on the court’s decision so far, and it is not known whether there is a possibility of appeal at a higher level, as the judiciary in Libya operates problematically due to the division of the country.

However, as long as this dispute over the Turkish-Libyan memorandum continues, with judicial decisions even annulling it, it will be extremely difficult for the Dbeibah government to proceed with the commencement of exploration in cooperation with the Turkish TRAO.