Originally published 2020-11-26.
On 22 November 2020, sailors from the German frigate Hamburg, serving in the European Union's Operation Irini, boarded the Turkish-flagged freighter Roseline A (also spelled Rosaline-A) about 200 km north of Benghazi, Libya. The EU suspected the ship of carrying weapons in breach of the UN arms embargo on Libya. Turkey protested that it had not given permission, the inspection was called off, and the German side said nothing suspicious had been found by the time the team left. A few days later President Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly blamed Greece and Cyprus for the episode.
Here is what happened on board, why the boarding was so contentious, and how it fits into the wider fight over arms flowing into Libya.
What Operation Irini is
The EU launched Operation Irini (Greek for "peace") on 31 March 2020. Its main job is to enforce the UN Security Council arms embargo on Libya at sea, using ships, aircraft and satellites. It also has secondary tasks: training the Libyan coast guard, disrupting people smuggling and stopping illegal oil exports. The mission is run from a headquarters in Rome, with an Italian commander, and member states contribute vessels in rotation.
Irini's legal basis includes UN Security Council Resolution 2292, which authorises inspections of ships suspected of breaching the embargo on the high seas off Libya and calls on flag states to cooperate. In practice the mission first asks the ship's flag state for consent. If none arrives within a set time, it may proceed.
The boarding of the Roseline A
According to the German account, the Hamburg waited four hours for Turkish approval before sending a team aboard the 16,000-tonne cargo ship. The EU later said the mission had in fact given five hours' notice: the usual four under maritime practice plus an extra hour requested by the Turkish embassy in Rome. Turkey's formal refusal, the EU said, came only after the team was already on the ship.
Once Ankara objected, the boarding party stopped and withdrew, and the Roseline A continued its voyage to Libya. The German defence ministry said the soldiers "had not found anything suspicious" up to that point. Turkey said the cargo was ordinary goods such as food and paint, and humanitarian aid.
Turkey summoned the EU, German and Italian envoys in Ankara, called Irini a biased mission aimed at Turkey and the Tripoli government, and on 27 November its prosecutors opened an investigation into the search. That inquiry was never expected to lead to arrests.
Erdogan's reaction and the Greek angle
Speaking to his party's lawmakers days after the boarding, Erdogan said Turkey had shown patience in the eastern Mediterranean despite what he called provocations by Greece and Cyprus, and accused the boarding team of raiding the freighter, breaking the law of the sea and harassing the crew. According to Greek media accounts of the speech, he also claimed that the captain of the ship leading the operation was Greek. That claim was not confirmed by the EU, and the frigate involved was German.
The timing explains some of the heat. On 15 November Erdogan had visited Varosha, the fenced-off resort town in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, a trip condemned by Cyprus and the EU. On 26 November the European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution urging tough sanctions against Turkey. Turkey's foreign ministry called the Parliament prejudiced and disconnected from reality. At the same time Greece and Turkey were locked in a dispute over maritime zones and gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean.
Germany's foreign ministry spokesperson, Andrea Sasse, said Berlin regularly raised its concerns about Turkish behaviour and that the issue was on the agenda of the December 2020 European Council. Germany insisted its crew had acted correctly on orders from Irini's headquarters.
Was the ship carrying weapons?
The short answer is that the boarding did not prove it, because it was cut short. Suspicion and evidence should be kept apart here.
What did emerge later is that the EU had watched the ship for some time. A confidential EU report cited by the German news agency dpa said the Roseline A had long been suspected of illegal arms shipments. Der Spiegel reported that Irini analysts had earlier spotted weapons being unloaded at Misrata in satellite images, and that suspicious cargo was seen again while the ship was docked at Ambarli port near Istanbul in November. None of this was tested in a full inspection, so it remains intelligence, not a confirmed finding.
The episode also set a pattern. Turkey has since repeatedly refused Irini permission to inspect Turkish-flagged ships, nine times by October 2022 and twelve by September 2024, according to the EU mission's record as summarised on Wikipedia.
Turkey, Libya and the arms embargo
The UN has banned arms deliveries to Libya since 2011, when Muammar Gaddafi's rule collapsed. After 2014 the country split between rival authorities: the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli and the eastern-based House of Representatives, whose forces were led by Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA).
Both sides received foreign help in defiance of the embargo. Turkey and Qatar backed Tripoli; the United Arab Emirates and Egypt supported Haftar, and the GNA also accused Russia and France of helping him. Turkey openly sent military support to the GNA from early 2020, which helped push back Haftar's offensive on Tripoli that had begun in April 2019. Turkey also reportedly recruited Syrian fighters, some from hardline factions, to fight for the Tripoli side, according to UN monitors and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The embargo was widely seen as failing. UN experts repeatedly described violations by several states as blatant, and the EU itself sanctioned the Turkish operator of another ship, the Cirkin, in September 2020 for breaching the embargo in May and June that year. That earlier case is part of why Irini kept a close eye on Turkish-flagged freighters.
The human cost and where things stood
Libya's wars after 2011 killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands. By the end of 2016 more than 5,700 people had died in the fighting, and the World Food Programme estimated about 435,000 people had been forced from their homes. Exact totals vary by source and are hard to pin down.
When the Roseline A was boarded, Libya had just reached a turning point: on 23 October 2020 a joint military commission of both sides agreed a permanent ceasefire and demanded that foreign fighters leave within three months. An interim unity government followed in March 2021. Foreign forces did not leave on schedule, which is one reason the arms embargo, and missions like Irini, remain in place.
For readers following the story, the key point is this: the November 2020 boarding was a real clash over who may inspect whom at sea, and it deepened tensions between Turkey, Greece, Cyprus and the EU. Whether that particular voyage carried weapons has never been publicly confirmed.
Sources: Wikipedia: Operation Irini; Al Jazeera, 27 November 2020: Turkey investigates vessel drama, rejects EU sanctions threat; Wikipedia: Second Libyan Civil War. Story first reported via Greek City Times.
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