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Ankara has shown increasing annoyance at the joint forces intervention in Libya, particularly with respect to France.
Campaigning for the 12 June parliamentary elections at home, the Erdogan government doesn’t miss a single opportunity to condemn the deviation in the application of Resolution 1973 fomented by France. Defense Minister, Vecdi Gönül, questioned France’s right to usurp the political direction of the military operations. For his part, Ahmet Davutoğlu, Minister of Foreign Affairs, took as an affront the fact that he was not invited to the Paris summit.
Above all, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took exception to French Interior Minister Claude Guéant’s comments. "There are some who, in spite of our admonitions, sew confusion in people’s minds about the Libya operation and use incongruous expressions such as crusade, which arouse some perplexity", he stated. "I hope the French will do immediately an examination of conscience for having uttered such stupefying notions that conjure up the clash of civilizations theory", he added.
What the Erdogan government finds particularly outraging is that Nicolas Sarkozy has transformed the UN mandate from a no-fly zone to a no-drive zone; French warplanes bombed and destroyed Libyan armored vehicles killing their crew when they posed no threat to civilians and were headed for the front line to engage in battle against armed insurgents.
Ankara - a member of the Atlantic Alliance - hopes it will get the chance to counter such aberrations once the operation will officially come under NATO’s command.
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