In August 1551 the Turks defeated the Spanyards and started the Ottoman rule of the region.The turks named Tripoli "Tarablus al Gharb" or "Tripoli-West" since they already had another Tripoli in Lebanon. At various times in its history the territory that is now Libya was occupied by Carthage, Rome, Arabia, Morocco, Egypt, and Spain. It was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1551 to 1911, serving in the 18th cent. as a base for pirates who, in return for immunity, provided large revenues to the local ruler. Libya was seized by Italy in 1911, but Libyan resistance continued until the 1930s. During world war 2, as an Italian colony, it was one of the main battlegrounds of N Africa, passing under an Anglo-French military government when the Axis was defeated in the area in 1943. In accordance with a UN decision, in 1951 the country became independent as the United Kingdom of Libya, with King Idris I as ruler. Idris was ousted in 1969 in a coup d'etat led by Col. Muammar al Qaddafi, who established an anti-Western dictatorship. British and American bases were closed in 1970, and unification was sought, unsuccessfully, with several other Arab countries. An implacable foe of Israel, Qaddafi used Libya's vast oil wealth to help support the Palestinian guerrilla movement, particularly radical elements. In 1979 Libya intervened in Uganda to help keep Idi amin in power, and in 1981 it dispatched troops into neighboring Chad (Libya had occupied the disputed Aozou Strip, in N Chad, in 1973), withdrawing most of them later that year. Qaddafi's forces continued to take sides in Chadian fighting, eventually occupying much of N. Chad, but they were pushed back somewhat in 1987. In 1990 the dispute over the Aozou Strip was submitted to the International Court of Justice, which ruled in Chad's favor, and the strip was returned to Chad in 1994. As a member of OPEC Libya has been a leading exponent of limiting production and increasing prices of petroleum. Since 1986 Libya has attempted to form a union with the Arabic countries of the Maghreb, especially Algeria and Tunisia. In the late 1980s the U.S. took action against Libya for its backing of terrorist activities against U.S. citizens, including an air strike (1986) on Qaddafi's residence and other sites in Libya. In 1992 the UN Security Council accused Libya of supporting state terrorism and called for a ban on air flights and arms sales to it unless suspects in the Lokerbie and another airplane bombing were turned over to the U.S., Britain, and France. Libya's foreign assets were also frozen.