Turkey–France Political and Diplomatic Relations: Contemporary Issues and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Under the Macron and Erdoğan presidencies, rising tensions and mutual mistrust have marked Turkish–French diplomatic relations. At the domestic political level, Turkey’s diaspora political positions, based on Ankara's attempt to gain influence over France's Muslim and Turkish communities, are interpreted in Paris as an intolerable interference in French domestic politics. Moreover, Turkey and France have entered an era of strategic rivalry in the Eastern Mediterranean at the international foreign policy level, wrestling for regional leadership and hegemony. Paris is critical of many aspects of Turkish policy: its conduct in Syria, its military support for Libya’s internationally recognized unity government, the maritime agreement that Ankara has established with Tripoli, and Turkey’s natural gas explorations in the Eastern Mediterranean that allegedly violate Greek and Cypriot maritime sovereignty. In the broader perspective, the Franco–Turkish geopolitical rivalry is to be understood in the light of a changing international order. The global power shift from West to East, coupled with the U.S. retreat from the Middle East/Mediterranean region, has ignited a struggle for influence that pits traditional powers, like France, against rising middle powers like Turkey. Attached to the Western/Eurocentric order, Paris has difficulty accommodating Turkey’s increased regional and geopolitical assertiveness.