The Background.  A long time ago, on a continent far, far away, the old Turkish empire got chopped to bits.  Now, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey's president, appears bent on revising history and changing power alignments, possibly bringing back the Ottoman Empire.  But is it good for NATO?  (Turkey has been a member since 1952.) According to the Washington Post of August 12, 2020, "A hundred years ago, French, British and Italian officials convened in a famous porcelain factory southwest of Paris to carve up the Ottoman Empire.

The Treaty of Sèvres, signed August 10, 1920, concluded months of fitful negotiations among the victors of World War I and paved the way for the remaking of the modern Middle East.

It imposed terms on the defeated Ottomans widely seen as even more punitive than the measures dictated to Germany by the Treaty of Versailles earlier that year, forcing the empire to rescind all its claims to lands in the Middle East and North Africa...

The blueprint set out by the treaty had a lasting legacy, in part prefiguring the borders and political futures of countries like Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

But it’s not remembered in the West as much as, say, the infamous clandestine Sykes-Picot pact, because of what followed in Turkey.

Nationalists in the Ottoman ranks, led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, rejected Sèvres and waged a series of wars that cast out the French, Greeks and Italians from Anatolia and compelled the Europeans to settle on new terms with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which defined Turkey’s modern borders.

Nevertheless, the memory of colonial Western schemes to deprive Turkey of sovereignty — and the armed struggle needed to foil them — still stalks the Turkish political imagination." The Changes.  The new and improved Turkey, which Erdoğan conceived, designed, and implemented, is, simultaneously, attempting to blackmail Europe with another migrant tsunami, while converting Libya into a terrorist base.  According to a March 20, 2020 BBC News Daily Report, Erdoğan said that the European Union had not helped settle Syrians in "safe zones" within  Syria.  Then, as a consequence, the Anatolian Republic ended its hold on the refugee flood.  "After Turkey opened its doors for migrants to leave its territory for Europe last week, he [Turkey's president] said, "hundreds of thousands have crossed, soon it will reach millions".  The meaning was clear.  Help us or we will drown you in aliens.  (For more on the migrants and Turkey's  connection to them, see this).  Some major, highly dangerous changes are now underway.  The Arabic Al-Saaa24.com, a Libyan online newspaper has stated the Turkish government is moving militants from Idlib and northern Syria to Tripoli.

 The publication noted that this is creating radical terrorist cells in Libya.

 Turkey is apparently trying to dilute the large concentration of fanatics in the part of Syria it occupies, while simultaneously helping the friendly Government of National Accord (GNA) with deliveries of combatants and weapons to Fayez al-Sarraj, chairman of the Presidential Council of Libya, in effect, Prime Minister.

The same periodical reports more sordid details about this shadowy business.  The group Hayyat Tahrir al-Sham, led by Abu Mohammad al-Julani, is recruiting fanatics from Idlib.  It is not a simple cluster of headhunters headed up by a bureaucrat.   They are a radical organization, and al-Julani is the Syrian terrorist who created the name-changing Jabhat al-Nusra, a branch of ISIS Mixing Is The Message.  As the Post remarked, " Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has a penchant for posturing over historic symbols, began meeting toward the end of last year with the leader of the UN-backed government in Libya in a former palace of Ottoman sultans in Istanbul.

In the aftermath of one of these sessions, Erdogan explicitly linked his government’s newly emboldened foreign policy to a moment of historical reckoning.

“Thanks to this military and energy cooperation, we overturned the Treaty of Sèvres,” he said, hailing his country’s willingness to once more project power across the Mediterranean.

In the months since, Turkish drones and military support have helped the Tripoli-based government turn the tide of battle in Libya’s messy civil war.

Erdogan, thanks to Libyan backing, has secured maritime exploration and potential oil drilling rights in the Eastern Mediterranean that put Turkey into a new tussle with other countries in the region, including Greece, Egypt, Cyprus and France.

The new Turkish claims clash with those of Greece and Cyprus and flared long-running tensions among these troubled neighbors." This is not good for NATO  Greece has been a member since 1952.  And NATO members pledge to respond together to an attack on any one of them.  The prospects for a limited conflict can rapidly spin out of control, embroiling half the Mediterranean basin.  And Beyond The Middle East and North Africa?  Turkey's open intervention in the domestic politics of other countries once again raises the issue of a neo-Ottoman threat.  This menace may (and likely will) affect the stability of the North African region.  This risk not only undermines various coalitions' efforts in Syria and Libya to fight terrorism, but also threatens Europe and the United States.  How?  Organized terrorist actors can infiltrate these areas through the strong Turkish lobby and Recep Erdoğan's advocating a Pan-Islamic world.

This conflict, bizarre as it is, has, not improbably, made it to the silver screen.

The Turkish factor comprises a major theme in the new, second part of the film "Shugalei". The motion picture emphasizes Turkey's neo-Ottoman ambitions as well as the criminal schemes of the GNA The movie's central characters are Russian sociologists who were kidnapped in Libya by Islamic terrorists in May 2019.

 The flick is a cross between a documentary and an action movie.

Turkey's terrorist "supplies" to Libya are an open secret.

"Shugalei's" plot covers such inconvenient topics for the GNA as torture in Mitiga prison, the alliance of terrorists with Fayez al-Sarraj's government, exploits of pro-government militants, and a narrow circle of elites misusing Libyan resources.

Mutual benefits?  More Dynamite For The Dinar?  The GNA is pursuing a pro-Turkish policy, while Recep Erdoğan's forces are increasingly integrated into the government's power structure.

The film speaks openly about mutually beneficial cooperation - the GNA receives weapons from the Turks, and in return, Turkey realizes its neo-Ottoman ambitions in the region - including the economic benefits of rich oil deposits.

Another one of Erdogan's goals is to integrate Turkish agents into the Libyan intelligence services.

During the last series of Turkish interventions in Libya, Ankara began to pressure Tripoli to move those close to Erdoğan and loyal to his program into the security services, the idea being to use them in placing terrorist actors at high levels.

 One illustration of the growing Turkish lobby in Libya was its efforts to hire  Khalid al-Sharif, a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).   His role was to oversee military operations in the capital, Tripoli, and implement Erdoğan's plans in Libya.

 Africa Intelligence, a website specializing in intelligence and strategic issues, exposed Turkey's intention of installing in the government a dangerous terrorist and representative of a Libyan militant group loyal to Al-Qaeda.

According to the website, he is one of the most dangerous extremists wanted by the Libyan army.

Unsurprisingly, the news about al-Sharif coincided with the visit of Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and Turkish Chief of Staff Yashar Guler to Tripoli, where they were likely exerting pressure to require Khalid al-Sharif's employment.

But, wait, there's more.

 Besides al-Sharif, there are other key figures to be aware of, such as Khaled al-Mishri, a Libyan politician of Turkish origin.  He has served as Chairman of the High Council of State (an  advisory  body to the GNA).  He is a member of the Justice and Construction Party, an organization affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

He is the de facto coordinator between the GNA and Turkey.

Ankara is thus establishing informal but powerful internal channels in Northern Africa, effectively radicalizing an already highly volatile region.

Let's Allow The Post To Have The Final Say To Put This In Perspective.  "France has tacitly backed the renegade Libyan general Khalifa Hifter and French President Emmanuel Macron has engaged in a war of words with Erdogan over their geopolitical differences, no matter their partnership as nominal NATO allies.

While Turkish strategists conjure the idea of a “blue homeland” — an expansionist vision of Turkish rights and claims in the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea — officials in Athens, another nominal NATO ally, speak openly of the real prospect of military conflict with Turkey." "For Erdogan, the current squabbles are part of a nationalist power play that’s hardly unique to Turkey.

“Turkish foreign policy is increasingly coercive and maximalist,” Yohanan Benhaim, a Paris-based Turkey scholar, told French daily Le Monde in a piece that explored Erdogan’s “revenge” on Sèvres.

“It echoes what we see in other countries, [such as] the position of Israel which wants to annex the West Bank...

International order is called into question.

What we are witnessing in Turkey is only the translation of a global phenomenon, the questioning of the status quo and the international order which prevailed until then.”