Paris should deal with its own colonial past instead of throwing accusations at other nations, Ankara said
FILE PHOTO: French President Emmanuel Macron (R) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) are pictured during the UN Libya conference in Berlin, Germany, on January 19, 2020. © Getty Images / Emmanuele Contini
The statements French President Macron made this week during his visit to Algeria demonstrate not just the fact that France had apparently failed to face its own colonial past but also his own “distorted mentality,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a damning statement over the weekend. The angry reaction was sparked by Macron accusing Turkey of spreading “anti-French propaganda” in Africa.
The Turkish ministry called accusations leveled by Macron “most unfortunate” and “unacceptable,” adding that the French president apparently “has difficulties in confronting his colonial past in Africa, especially in Algeria.” France seeks to deal with this matter by accusing other nations of some malicious activities, the ministry’s statement added.
“If France supposes that there are reactions against it in the African continent, it should search for the source of these reactions in its colonial past and its efforts to still pursue this with different methods,” the statement said. Any attempts to explain anti-French sentiments in Africa by some “third nation’s activities” is nothing but a denial of history that only shows the “distorted mentality of some politicians,” it added.
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Turkey is a strategic partner of the African Union and encourages “friendship, not hostility” on the continent, the ministry said. Ankara hopes that Paris would eventually “reach the maturity to face its colonial past without blaming other countries,” it added.
Macron accused Turkey – alongside with Russia and China – of building certain “activist networks” that supposedly pursue a “neo-colonialist” and “imperialist” agenda while spreading “anti-French propaganda” and portraying Paris as an “enemy” of Africa.
Although the ancestors of modern Algerians had a “struggle” against France in the past, now Africans “are being taught baseless things” about France, Macron told journalists during his visit to the Algerian capital, Algiers.
His visit came amid strained relations between the ex-colonial empire and its former colony. Last year, Macron questioned Algeria’s existence as a nation before French colonial rule and accused its government of fomenting “hatred towards France.” In response, Algiers recalled its ambassador from Paris and banned French military aircraft from its national airspace.
Relations have since been restored along with French military aircraft overflights through Algerian airspace to French bases in sub-Saharan Africa. Following this week’s visit, Macron and Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune declared a new “irreversible dynamic of progress” in bilateral relations.
