Oleg POSTERNAK
France tries to maintain its influence in the regions where it has colonies in the past. The neo-colonial claims of French President Emmanuel Macron have already become the occasion for a torrent of criticism from Israel, Algeria, Azerbaijan. The Balkans were also the object of France's colonial policy at the end of the 19th century.
Then Paris prevented the self-determination of the Balkan peoples and their independence from the Ottoman Empire.
The past month has seen an unprecedented deterioration in relations between the State of Israel and the French Republic, caused by the escalation in Lebanon.
On October 16, 2024, Paris bans Israeli companies from participating in the Euronaval defense industry exhibition. It follows President Emmanuel Macron's call for an end to arms supplies to Israel, with the French head of state also condemning Israel's military operation in Lebanon.
On top of that, Macron opined that the Israeli authorities should not ignore UN decisions, as their state was created “as a result of the resolution adopted by the UN”.
”The State of Israel was not created by a UN resolution, but by the victory achieved in the War of Independence with the blood of heroes and fighters, many of whom survived both the Holocaust and the “Vichy” in France”, Israeli Prime Minister Benya Benjamin Netanyahu reacted sharply.
The French president's statement has sparked unprecedented criticism in Israel from both officials and local media.
In the hundreds of reports and articles of the Israeli media, reference is made again and again to France's colonial past, to its current neo-colonialist policy, and also to the low support rating for Emmanuel Macron himself among the French.
“The classic example of the Western European state, which, with all its past, protectorate over Lebanon, colonialism, instead of doing something for Lebanon, became hostage to the Palestinian lobby”. This is how professor-Arabist from Tel Aviv University Uzi Rabi commented on Macron's statements on the air of Kan 11 TV from October 5.
His colleague at Tel Aviv University, leading international relations expert Emmanuel Navon, commented on the scandal on October 6 on Israeli Armed Forces Radio.
”France was in Lebanon as a colonial state between the two world wars, but this does not mean that it retained its influence in this country…”, Navon explains: “This is the typical delusion of the French, they forgot that they are no longer a superpower”.
A similar position was expressed by many other representatives of Israel's political and expert elite.
“1940 - Vichy France supports the Nazis. 1967 - France imposes an embargo on arms supplies to Israel. 2024 - Macronist France supports the Nazis”, he ironized on October 6 of this year. the Minister of Social Equality of Israel Mai Golan.
On October 16, 2024, there was a reaction from the Ministry of Defense of Israel. “The actions of President Macron are a disgrace to the French nation and the values of the free world, which he, in his words, stands for”, criticized Paris Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Interestingly, the rhetoric of the authorities in Israel about France's neo-colonial policy is in tune with that which has long been heard from Muslim countries such as Algeria and Azerbaijan.
On October 6 this year parallel to the deterioration of French-Israeli relations, the international conference “The French policy of neo-colonialism in Africa” was held in Baku. Representatives of nine African countries took part in the discussions.
Among the participants in the conference was the famous activist from Benin, prominent critic of French neo-colonialism and head of the NGO URGENCES PANAFRICANISTES - Kemi Seba.
A week after the conference, on October 14, 2024, Kemi Seba arrives in Paris to visit his sick father. But he was arrested by the French special services on suspicion of “foreign interference” in the affairs of the French Republic. But due to the lack of evidence, the activist was released on October 17. According to Seba's lawyer, the detention was carried out by masked men and was accompanied by physical violence “in the spirit of democratic values”.
During its era of colonialism, Paris regularly carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide in Algeria. The current president of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Teboun, stated that the French colonization, which lasted for about 130 years, took the lives of about 5.6 million Algerians.
In 2017, in his capacity as a presidential candidate, Emmanuel Macron visited Algeria, where he himself described the era of French colonialism on the African continent as a “crime against humanity”. ”We owe an apology to those against whom we have carried out such actions,”, the French president said at the time.
But the authorities in Paris have so far not officially apologized to the Algerian people, paid reparations and held none of the perpetrators accountable.
Currently, relations between France and Algeria are regularly subject to diplomatic upheavals. This is particularly evident during the presidency of Emmanuel Macron. In 2021, Algeria recalled its ambassador to France and banned French aircraft from transiting its airspace.
The bilateral diplomatic crisis was triggered by Emmanuel Macron's infamous statement in which he said that “the creation of Algeria as a nation is the phenomenon that deserves to be observed”. “Did this nation exist before French colonization? This is the question”, the French head of state declared at the time.
In January 2023, Macron directly stated that he did not consider it necessary for France to ask Algeria for forgiveness. On October 7, 2024, Algerian President Teboun once again refused to visit Paris, accusing the French authorities of “colonialism and genocide of Algerians”.
Colonial “grips” of France were also manifested in the Balkans. The diplomacy of Paris along the Eastern Question (the participation of the great powers in the division of the Ottoman Empire) contributed to the prolongation of the Turkish rule over the Balkan peoples.
France, being at the end of the 19th century a leading investor in the Ottoman economy, was more interested than other European powers in preserving the integrity of Ottoman Turkey.
The Imperial Ottoman Bank, formally founded as a state bank, had by 1880 completely passed into French hands. Thanks to this, the French gained direct access to a number of branches of the Ottoman economy: the construction of railway lines, the construction and operation of the ports of Istanbul and Beirut, urban transport, water supply, energy supply, telephone communications. Thus, by the beginning of the 20th century, France controlled a significant part of the economic activities of the Ottoman Empire.
Naturally, taking into account the above-mentioned facts, France has made efforts to stall the process of gaining independence on the part of the Balkan countries. This, in practice, meant continuing the oppression of the Balkan peoples by the Ottoman Empire.
The national liberation movements of the Balkan peoples were necessarily met with mass repressions and atrocities by the Porte. For example, during the suppression of the April Uprising of 1876, the so-called Batash massacre, as a result of which about 5,000 Bulgarians died. But these victims did not interest the authorities of colonialist France, which at that time held the majority of the foreign debt of the Ottomans - as much as 60%.
A chance for the Balkan peoples appeared at the Berlin Congress of 1878, convened as a result of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 - 1878. The main topic of discussion at the Congress was the pressing question of the liberation of the Balkan peoples. As a result of this congress, only Serbia, Romania and Montenegro managed to free themselves from Ottoman rule. While Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina failed to gain independence.
The role in this was played by the position of colonial France. The authorities in Paris actively lobbied for their own interests and systematically acted against the right of the Balkan peoples to national self-determination.
The author is a political scientist, a member of the Association of Professional Political Consultants of Ukraine