The Turkish Parliament has on Thursday ratified a motion authorizing the government to send troops to Libya.

Of the 509 deputies who attended the voting, 325 voted in favor of the controversial motion and 184 against it.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) voted for the motion, while the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and Good (IYI) Party voted against it.

According to Tülay Hatimoğulları of the HDP, the motion is part of the Turkish state’s expansionist policy and amounts to an internal intervention under international law. Hatimoğulları stated that Turkey was escalating the tension and wanted to take advantage of it in its domestic policy.

Ünal Çeviköz on behalf of the CHP group remarked that the government of Turkey was putting the country on the line with its decision to send troops to Libya. “This is a call for a disaster, it is a motion of war. The Parliament of Turkey shouldn’t be used as a means to get the orders of the Palace. I want to call the attention of those who might think that the motion is for national security to the fact that national security is never mentioned in the justification of this motion.”

The Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) Leader and Istanbul MP Erkan Baş strongly criticised the motion that will enable the deployment of the country’s young men to a war miles away for the sake of the government’s adventures. He noted that Turkey became more and more dependent on imperialist forces because of the government’s desire to engage in wars with imperialist ambitions.

There are widespread concerns that Turkish forces could in fact aggravate Libya’s conflict further and destabilise the region.

The Tripoli-based government of Libya prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj, has faced an offensive by the rival, east-based government and commander Gen Khalifa Haftar.

Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said last month that Sarraj requested the Turkish deployment, after they signed a military deal that allows Ankara to dispatch military experts and personnel to Libya.

That deal, along with a separate agreement on maritime boundaries between Turkey and Libya, has displeased many across the region and beyond.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has denounced, at the end of the year, Turkish operations of transporting fighters from Syria to Libya.

Citing very reliable sources, SOHR said that the number of fighters who arrived in the Libyan capital Tripoli, has reached 300. Meanwhile, the number of conscripts who arrived in Turkish camps in order to receive training courses ranges between 900 to 1000, SOHR noted.

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