On Monday, Egypt’s parliament gave military junta leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi approval to deploy troops abroad into neighboring Libya, following up a similar authorization from Libya’s Tobruk parliament, which is loyal to Gen. Khalifa Hafter and is seeking an intervention on their behalf.

This is the latest of Hafter’s several multi-year bids to take over Libya. A military dictatorship themselves, the Sisi junta has backed Hafter heavily, seeing it as a chance to install a friendly government on their border.

Egyptian airstrikes are common, but a direct ground invasion is hugely risky, because Turkey already has troops in Libya, and they are backing the alternative government in Tripoli. This looks tailor-made to be a proxy battle over Libya.

Egypt and Turkey have ideological differences, not just that Egypt is under military rule after a coup while Turkey’s coup failed. The two both have interests in the future of Libya, Turkey for the sake of oil and gas exploration.