Christian Makarian is an international relations specialist and essayist. He has notably published
Genealogy of the Catastrophe, Rediscovering Wisdom in the Face of the Unpredictable
(Éditions du Cerf).
“
There will be attempts to interfere with the next election.
It is written.
The threats are not veiled.
Emmanuel Macron did not mince his words, which we can imagine weighed (C in the air of March 23) at the start of the European Council of March 25, attributing to the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan the will of s 'interfere in the presidential deadline of 2022. No president has ever expressed himself so categorically on this subject and this should lead one to reflect on the degree of penetration of the influence acquired by Turkey within the French political landscape.
By advancing on two differentiated but converging fronts, the international field and intra-community life, the Turkish reis (leader) has established himself as a major player in the internal debates of French society.
He did the same in Germany or in various European countries which have a significant component of Turkish origin.
It is far, very far, to make him another Atatürk, whose work was resolutely reforming, modernizing and European-centered.
But Erdogan undoubtedly succeeded in entering Europe;
through the little door, that of underground maneuvers, over-powered hackers, barely disguised action groups.
Erdogan has acquired the status of an inescapable leader and he has achieved his goal.
It must be recognized that, under his influence, Turkey has become a matter of French domestic policy.
Therefore, everything that we think we are sending him as warnings actually comes to him in the form of compliments: he has acquired the status of an inescapable leader and he has achieved his goal.
Among its means of action, the takeover of a substantial part of European Islam occupies a preponderant role.
In the same documentary as the one in which Emmanuel Macron spoke, we hear an analysis by Nicolas Sarkozy which deserves the greatest interest.
For the former French president, who had clashed with Erdogan on several occasions, the latter would act much less out of
Muslim
"
piety
" than out of political opportunism.
This is the key to reading that should be privileged.
To read also:
"There will be no real appeasement with Turkey as long as it remains dominated by the current power"
In Turkey, the instrumentalisation of religion by the AKP's political machine is arguably the greatest achievement of a Muslim head of state for over a century.
Most Arab despots have indeed tried to exploit the Islamist factor by a mixture of concessions and repression in order not to be in turn destabilized by the emergence of this ideology among populations inexorably impoverished by the carelessness of successive political leaders.
In the history of Arab misfortune, throughout the twentieth century, there is a first pan-Arab nationalist phase, which ends in three flat-sided defeats against Israel (1948-49, 1967, 1973).
After that, the forced turnaround of Egypt and then Jordan, both signatories of a peace treaty with Israel, paved the way for Islamism in its various and increasingly radicalized forms, from the Muslim Brotherhood to the jihadists.
Today, Milli Görüs, a very structured and hierarchical body, controls more than 500 mosques across Europe.
Erdogan is the only one who has succeeded in both boosting the economy of his country by relying on an Islamist doctrine which enhances the Ottoman past in a conquering sense which rallies the working masses to his panache who just do not find their account. in the Europeanization of the Turkish elites.
Hence the aura he has acquired in the Muslim world and, by extension, with the Muslim communities of Europe resulting from the massive immigration of the last fifty years.
Among these immigrants, the Turks were literally framed by their nation of origin as there had been since Atatürk - as early as 1924 with the creation of a Strict Administration of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) - an organization which strictly subjugated Islam to the State.
Read also:
Strasbourg Mosque: "The new gift from environmentalists to Islamists"
Religion, with its associative cogs, is therefore for Erdogan a high-level political means to pursue his unlimited personal ambitions.
The best proof of this is provided by the organization Milli Görüs (word for word "
national vision
", the nation being understood in the sense of "
community of believers
"), founded in 1969 by Necmettin Erbakan, founder of several Islamist parties, with whom Recep Tayyip Erdogan drew his initial inspiration and found the momentum that has led him to this day.
Erbakan wanted to put a stop to the process of Westernization of Turkey, he had declared: "
We are not Westerners, we are not European
".
In 1989, in the Netherlands, he added: “
The Europeans are sick… We will give them medicine.
All of Europe will become Islamic.
We will conquer Rome.
"
Today, Milli Görüs, a very structured and hierarchical body, controls more than 500 mosques across Europe;
its French branch, the CIMG (Islamic Confederation Milli Görüs), created in 1995, manages 71 mosques, brings together more than 300 associations (religious, cultural, linguistic, educational…) and is fully managed by the AKP from Turkey.
In Strasbourg, as in so many other parts of old Europe, so tired, one must see the slow and sure stages of the senseless project of the Turkish Islamist activists.
This is how it is entirely acquired by Erdogan, who has through it an implacable lever within the Islam of France.
The controversy - very justified - surrounding the construction of the Eyyûb Sultan mosque in Strasbourg is from this point of view extremely significant.
There is already a mosque of the same name in Istanbul;
it was built on the tomb of a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, who fell during the first siege of Constantinople, in 674, marked by the failure of the Umayyad Arab armies.
In 1453, the Ottoman Turks eventually took the city, the "
second Rome
", and made it a foundational hour of glory, relentlessly exalted by Erdogan.
In Strasbourg, as in so many other parts of old Europe, so tired, one must see the slow and sure stages of the senseless project of the Turkish Islamist activists.
When history appears so coldly readable, and we still do not want to learn from it, what can we evoke other than blindness?