A €1.9 Billion Cable Puts the Türkiye–Libya Maritime Deal Back in the Spotlight
The Great Sea Interconnector is ostensibly an electricity project. But as seabed surveys prepare to resume, the cable is becoming another test of the maritime order that Türkiye and Libya sought to reshape in 2019.
A planned electricity cable stretching across the Eastern Mediterranean has brought an old Türkiye–Libya dispute back into immediate relevance.
On October 15, Greece said the EU-backed Great Sea Interconnector had applied to resume seabed surveys needed for the next stage of the project. The €1.9 billion scheme is intended to connect Greece and Cyprus and, at a later stage, Israel, linking Cyprus, currently the only EU member state without an electricity connection to the bloc’s grid, more closely to the European energy market. Reuters reported on the application to restart seabed surveys
What would normally be a technical phase of an infrastructure project has become a geopolitical problem because the proposed survey areas intersect with one of the Eastern Mediterranean’s most persistent maritime disputes.
Türkiye argues that activity in parts of the area requires prior coordination with Ankara. Greece rejects any suggestion that Turkish authorization is necessary. Behind that disagreement sits the maritime delimitation memorandum signed by Türkiye and Libya in November 2019, an agreement that, seven years later, continues to shape infrastructure planning far beyond the countries that signed it.
The significance of the Great Sea Interconnector is therefore larger than a cable.
The project is designed as a 1,000-megawatt, high-voltage electricity link running for more than 1,200 kilometers. The Greece–Cyprus section alone extends roughly 898 kilometers and has received €657 million through the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility. The European Commission describes the interconnector as a strategic alternative energy route for Europe
Its supporters see it as part of Europe’s effort to diversify energy connections, integrate renewable electricity and reduce Cyprus’s energy isolation. Washington has also entered the discussion. On October 8, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly backed the project and said the United States was prepared to use diplomacy to help overcome obstacles to its completion. Rubio said Washington remained committed to the Mediterranean electricity link
That gives a seemingly technical dispute over survey vessels a much wider strategic audience.
For Türkiye, however, the issue is tied to a different reading of Eastern Mediterranean geography. Ankara has consistently argued that islands should not automatically generate maritime jurisdiction on the scale claimed by Greece, particularly when this would sharply restrict Türkiye’s access to the Mediterranean.
The 2019 agreement with Libya translated that position into a bilateral maritime boundary.
The memorandum, signed in Istanbul on November 27, 2019, established a boundary between claimed Turkish and Libyan maritime jurisdiction areas. It entered into force on December 8 and was subsequently registered with the United Nations. The United Nations treaty database contains the registered Türkiye–Libya memorandum Registration at the UN, however, does not resolve the competing legal claims surrounding the agreement.
Greece, Cyprus and the European Union have rejected its implications. The European Council has argued that the memorandum infringes the sovereign rights of third states and cannot create legal consequences for them. The EU formally set out its opposition to the agreement in 2019 Türkiye maintains the opposite position, describing the memorandum as compliant with international law and based on an equitable delimitation of maritime jurisdiction. Ankara reiterated that position in a 2025 Foreign Ministry statement
The Great Sea Interconnector now turns those competing legal positions into a practical question: can infrastructure be built across contested seabed without settling the dispute over who has jurisdiction there?
That is precisely why Libya matters.
For years, the maritime agreement was frequently discussed as an instrument of Turkish strategy rather than as an active component of Libya’s own Mediterranean policy. Political fragmentation inside Libya reinforced that perception. Authorities in Tripoli supported the deal, while the eastern-based House of Representatives repeatedly questioned its legitimacy.
Former parliament speaker Aguila Saleh remained one of its most vocal institutional critics. In December 2025, he argued that the agreement had never been approved by the House and was therefore non-binding from his institution’s perspective. The Libya Observer reported Saleh’s objections to the maritime memorandum
Yet that position became less static during 2026.
As relations between Ankara and eastern Libya improved, the House of Representatives established a technical process to review the maritime arrangement. That did not amount to ratification, but it was politically significant: a document that eastern institutions had largely dismissed was now at least being examined. The Middle East Council documented the changing eastern Libyan approach to the agreement
Libyan officials have simultaneously kept channels with Greece open. During parliamentary talks in Athens in September, Hassan al-Barghouthi, deputy chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Libya’s maritime agreements remained under review and called for the issue to be handled through legal mechanisms and calm dialogue. Libyan lawmakers discussed the maritime issue with their Greek counterparts in September
The political landscape in Benghazi has since changed further.
On October 6, members of the House elected Saleheen Abdul Nabi as their new speaker after approving changes to the chamber’s internal rules. UNSMIL subsequently said it would engage with the new parliamentary leadership as part of efforts to advance Libya’s political roadmap. UNSMIL detailed the leadership change in its October Security Council briefing
It would be premature to interpret that change as evidence that the House will approve the Türkiye–Libya maritime agreement. Libya’s institutions remain divided, and maritime policy intersects with domestic legitimacy, relations with Egypt and Greece, and the interests of eastern political and military actors.
But the timing matters.
The parliamentary transition is taking place just as the 2019 memorandum is acquiring renewed practical importance in the Eastern Mediterranean. At the same time, Türkiye has spent the past year improving ties with eastern Libya, while Greece and Egypt have intensified their own discussions with Libyan actors over maritime boundaries and regional coordination. On October 15 — the same day Greece announced the latest move on the cable surveys — Egyptian and Greek officials held another round of consultations on Libya and stressed the importance of maritime delimitation with neighboring states.
For Libya, this creates both leverage and risk.
The country sits between competing visions of the Mediterranean maritime order. Its location gives Libyan institutions diplomatic weight in questions involving electricity cables, offshore exploration, future pipelines and maritime corridors. But institutional fragmentation also means external powers can engage different Libyan centers of authority in pursuit of competing objectives.
The Great Sea Interconnector illustrates how quickly those two realities converge.
French industrial group Nexans, which is responsible for the cable system, has tried to distance itself from the political dispute. On October 4, it explicitly denied reports that it had contacted or planned to contact Turkish authorities regarding upcoming surveys, saying its coordination was strictly with the project promoter and Greek and Cypriot authorities. Nexans issued a formal statement denying planned political contacts with Ankara
But companies cannot entirely separate infrastructure from geopolitics when the seabed itself is contested.
That may be the broader lesson for Libya. The 2019 Türkiye–Libya memorandum is no longer relevant only when Ankara and Athens exchange statements about maps. It now intersects with multibillion-euro infrastructure, European energy planning, American diplomacy and Libya’s own attempt to redefine relations with Türkiye, Greece and Egypt.
Whether the Great Sea Interconnector proceeds without another major confrontation remains uncertain. What is clearer is that Libya’s maritime position has again become something other regional actors cannot treat as peripheral.
Seven years after the memorandum was signed, its real significance may be emerging not through a drilling ship or a naval confrontation, but through the route of an electricity cable beneath the Mediterranean.
