LIBYA: Erdogan’s son-in-law acquires construction project for Misrata International Airport

MISRATA and ANKARA – While the Libyan crisis is witnessing a breakthrough between the two warring parties to the conflict, Turkish companies enhance their chances of obtaining important reconstruction and trade deals in Libya. Reconstruction in especially the infrastructure and energy sector is essential in rebuilding the war-torn country.

Several of such deals are made without public tenders and assigned to parties with links to the Turkish-backed Libyan National Accord government led by Fayez al-Sarraj. Both Tripoli and Misrata are controlled by the Libyan government of National Accord.

The last of these deals went to a construction company owned by the family of Berat Albayrak, former Turkish Finance Minister and son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Albayrak family owned Albayrak Group acquired one of the most important and largest construction projects in Libya, the reconstruction, maintenance, and development of Misrata International Airport.

The assignment comes in conjunction with the emergence of disagreements among the participants in the Libyan political dialogue about the agreements concluded by the National Accord government, including security and trade agreements with Turkey. Discussion is on whether private interests and foreign agendas were taken into account when assigning tenders, if there are tenders at all, by the government of National Accord.