Dr. Maryam Varej Kazemi – Researcher in Geopolitical Affairs
France’s Mediterranean policy, based on advancing its colonial heritage, provides Paris with the opportunity to expand its geopolitical and geostrategic influence in the territories of the Ottoman Empire in West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean. The fact that France strives to maintain its political influence in these areas clearly challenges Turkey’s foreign policy, and conversely, Turkey’s presence in the region can challenge France’s foreign policy. For example, in 2019, the Libya-Turkey agreement on a maritime border treaty, aimed at creating an exclusive economic zone in the Mediterranean Sea, was perceived by France as a genuine threat against the European Union.
In this regard, French leaders have promoted an anti-Turkey policy to mobilize public opinion against Turkey at the national, European, and international levels, focusing on a strategy of supporting the positions of European countries, notably Greece and Cyprus. Under these circumstances, France’s desired strategy in the region is for the European Union to adopt an exclusionary political approach towards Turkey, providing political and diplomatic support to Greece and Cyprus. However, most EU countries, for specific strategic reasons, have preferred not to block dialogue channels with Turkey.
However, France and French politicians focus on Turkey’s Islamic and anti-European characteristics as part of a broader geopolitical strategy aimed at portraying Turkey as an external threat to France’s foreign policy. French politicians have attempted to base this policy on historical elements, similar to Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” doctrine, which is rooted in the cultural and historical conflicts between the West and the East. In this process, they combine anti-Islamic and anti-Turkish rhetoric to incite European and French public opinion against Ankara and convince their voters that Turkey’s aggressive foreign policy in the Eastern Mediterranean poses a threat to the security of France and the European Union, even though France and many EU countries have no maritime borders in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
From a geopolitical perspective, France may perceive that Libya’s southern neighbors—Chad, Niger, Mali, Sudan, and potentially Tunisia and Algeria—will become areas of increasing Turkish influence, which could jeopardize France’s influence over these countries. In other words, increasing Turkish influence in the region could lead to a reshaping of the power structure in North and Central Africa, which would be detrimental to France, as it strives to pursue a leadership policy in the Mediterranean. The sum of these approaches has led the government of Emmanuel Macron, the current President of France, to defend France’s role as the Mediterranean police in recalibrating its foreign policy towards Turkey and to highlight in its geostrategic considerations a Mediterranean policy that primarily involves excluding Turkey from the region to reassert influence in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean.
Thus, Emmanuel Macron has increased his country’s share in the Eastern Mediterranean and in what is referred to in French discourse as the Greater Near East. Through a series of speeches and political proposals, Macron seeks to advance a vision for the region that is partly based on emerging geopolitical realities, including Turkey’s exit from NATO, the reduction of American power in the region, energy-related issues, and a discourse based on the French concept of coexistence.
It appears that France’s adoption of such strategies could alter the geostrategic environment, and the fear of losing its sphere of influence may lead to a series of provocative actions that directly pose fundamental challenges to the European Union. Although Turkey, as a regional power, is currently implementing its policies in West Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean Sea, which has caused concerns for France, which claims leadership in these regions, Paris must accept that Ankara, as a strategic partner of NATO and the United States, is at the heart of geostrategic-geopolitical and geo-economic issues in the Mediterranean region and cannot be ignored or excluded from the equations of the Euro-Mediterranean region. Furthermore, the geopolitical achievements that Turkey pursues to create a rebalancing in the Mediterranean (which will begin from Syria) and will bring about a shift in line with the (particularly geo-economic) interests of the Israeli regime, will practically place France in a critical and complex situation that could weaken its capabilities to become a dominant player in the Mediterranean region and, conversely, turn Turkey into a strategic partner for regional and international powers to achieve effective agreements in the region.