In recent months Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become a regular and outspoken critic of what he calls French “Islamophobia”. An example was Erdogan's reaction after his French counterpart, President Emmanuel Macron, gave a speech at Les Mureaux, north-west of Paris, on October 2nd 2020. The French president announced a raft of measures aimed at clamping down on Islamist radicalism and the influence of foreign powers in France's Muslim communities; in response Turkey's leader suggested that Macron needed “mental treatment”. He has also accused the French head of state of behaving like a “colonial prefect” and of wanting to “settle old scores with Islam and Muslims”.
“There is an attempt [editor's note, in France] to have a Muslim citizen profile that does not raise his/her voice to brutality, remains silent against the cruel, who is passive, diffident, fearful and unassuming,” said the Turkish president in October 20th 2020. He was referring to the “charter of principles” for Islam in France that was finally adopted by France's main Muslim body the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) or Conseil Français du Culte Musulman on January 18th 2021. This charter is seen as a form of code of conduct for Muslim institutions in France.
And while the verbal attacks from the Turkish president may have dimmed in intensity since then, the opposition in Ankara to the French reforms remains as strong as ever. This can be seen in the reprisal measures taken against French teachers at the Franco-Turkish Galatasaray University in Istanbul where the teaching language is French. These teachers will now be obliged to attain high levels in the Turkish language, a move which could even jeopardise the future of this unique educational venture which was created by a 1992 treaty between the two countries.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Many observers also see Turkey's dislike of the French reforms as the main driver behind the decision of two Franco-Turkish federations – both members of the CFCM - not to sign the charter of principles. These federations are the Confédération Islamique Milli Görüs (CIMG) and the Comité de Coordination des Musulmans Turcs de France (CCMTF), whose mosques are headed by imams sent by Diyanet, Turkey's religious affairs department.
As is often the case, when the Turkish president attacks the West, political considerations are rarely far away. “On French streets young people get the impression that their countries of origin – Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal etc – give in and don't say anything. That gives further scope for Ankara to play a leadership role on European streets, having failed to do so on Arab streets during the Arab Spring [editor's note, in 2011],” said Samim Akgönül, director of the department of Turkish studies at Strasbourg University in north-east France. “It's revenge and this time it's got off to a good start for Turkey.”
These bilateral tensions come as President Erdogan plans to reform the Turkish constitution – which was already modified in 2017 to massively increase the head of state's powers – which could involve repealing the notion of laicity, which is currently enshrined as a fundamental principle in the country's law. On February 10th 2021 Professor Mehmet Boynukalın the head imam at the Hagia Sofia mosque in Istanbul – a famous building newly reconverted after serving as a basilica and museum for centuries – launched a campaign for Islam to become Turkey's official religion. “The constitutions of 1921 and 1924 mentioned Islam as the religion of the state and no reference was made to laicity. The Republic of Turkey should return to its factory settings,” Tweeted Professor Boynukalın, using a hashtag urging that Islam feature in the country's constitution.
Ankara's antagonism to the French reforms also has a more concrete and immediate goal: that of enabling Turkey to maintain a form of control over the 500,000 or so Turkish and dual Franco-Turkish nationals who live in France, plus the 200,000 or so French citizens who have Turkish parents. “This paternalistic leadership is a reality. Its only goal is to ensure that the generations born, educated and brought up in France don't lose their link with the motherland, and to make sure that they continue to be lookouts, ambassadors for Turkey,” explained academic Samim Akgönül. “In short, a population that can be mobilised by Ankara when there's political conflict with France.”
However, two measures recently been adopted by Paris threaten the main routes by which Turkey seeks to exercise this control. First of all, early in 2020 the French authorities announced that from 2024 they will halt the system of “seconded imams”, in other words those sent by other countries, in French mosques. This will end the presence in French mosques of imams employed by Turkey's Diyanet; there are currently around 130 of them serving the Turkish community in France.
Secondly, the French authorities have reformed the programme set up in the 1970s under which children of immigrant families from nine designated countries are taught the language and culture of their origins. This scheme is known as ELCO or Enseignement Langue et Culture d'Origine. The reforms, which came into force in September, give France's Education Ministry the right to inspect these lessons and in particular oversee the level of French of the teachers sent to France by Turkey and the eight other participating countries.
However, though the Franco-Turkish Sunni and cultural groups in France share many of the same concerns as the Turkish authorities about the French reforms, they deny that they are acting under orders from Ankara. “In France they talk about Turkey all day long. It's as if Erdogan had called me to tell me not to sign the charter [editor's note, on the principles of Islam in France],” complained Ibrahim Alci, president of the CCMTF. “It wasn't because I am of Turkish origin that I didn't sign. I am French first and foremost.”
Alci, who is an executive in a large chain of electrical goods stores, and whose federation represents 270 cultural associations and covers 11% of all mosques in France, said his main reason for not signing the charter was the rushed way in which it was adopted by the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM). This was done under pressure from the Ministry of the Interior – which oversees relations with religious groups in France – so that its presentation to President Macron could coincide with the first reading of the draft bill on “separatism” in France's second chamber of Parliament, the National Assembly.
“What mattered to me was that the decisions that had been made were supported on the ground,” said Alci, who is also president of a cultural association at Roubaix near Lille in northern France. But no consultation took place because of the lack of time. Allowing imams to take ownership of the charter's text would have been a minimum requirement, he said. “After all, do Catholics have a charter? Do Jews have a charter? Do Buddhists have a charter?” he asked.
As for its main contents, Ibrahim Alci said that the federation was in agreement with “90% of the charter”. On February 1st a statement was released setting out the objections of the three Muslim groups that have not signed up; these are the Franco-Turkish groups CCMTF and CIMG plus Foi et Pratique, a small federation close to the purist Tablighi Jamaat Sunni movement founded in India in 1926.
Though it was the Franco-Turkish network that took the lead in refusing to sign the charter, academic Samim Akgönül said that this was because they “had the power to do so, which in my opinion wasn't the case for the other federations”. He added: “Even though I think that many of them didn't want to sign the document either.”
The growing protest against the charter seems to support the academic's view. “As vice-president of the CFCM I receive letters addressed to the council and I can tell you that there are quite a few regions who don't at all agree with this text,” said Ibrahim Alci. “At the CCMTF we've had a lots of thanks from collective groups who call us.” Around “700 to 750 mosques” supported them he said, out of a total of around 2,500 Muslim places of worship across France.
France's interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, nonetheless seems determined to make the Franco-Turkish associations pay for their insubordination. Speaking on France Inter radio on February 1st, the minister appeared to reply in the affirmative when asked whether he would demand that the two recalcitrant federations be thrown out of the CFCM.
“They can no longer be in those places where the Republic now has an institutional link,” said Gérald Darmanin. “We can no longer talk with people who refuse to commit to paper that they are perfectly reconciled with the Republic's laws, that the Republic's law is superior to God's law.”
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The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter