President Jacques Chirac earned the admiration of all who opposed President Bush’s invasion of Iraq by taking a prominent role in the campaign to stop it from happening. But there are times when his decisions evoke less than admiration. That happened this week at the NATO Istanbul meeting when he berated the US president for publicly encouraging the European Union to speed up the inclusion of Turkey within its ranks. Chirac sought to tell him that it was not his business whom the EU should accept as a member state. What Bush thought of Chirac’s comments was demonstrated clearly when he took the opportunity the following day to repeat his call, in even clearer terms to an audience of Turkish students.
Chirac may have thought that he had been given another “unmissable” opportunity to tweak the US president’s nose, which he believes will go down well with the electorate back in France. However, he clearly overlooked that his negative comments on Turkish EU membership were being delivered while he himself was a guest of the Turkish people. Besides, Bush made his comments as part of an observation on the positive message that Turkish accession to the EU would give to the Islamic world, demonstrating that “Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion, and it would expose the ‘clash of civilizations’ as a passing myth of history.”
In seizing the opportunity to take another shot at the Americans, Chirac has reminded observers of the increasingly racist tendency of his government. Some pundits have argued that Chirac’s UMP party was seeking to head off the virulently racist National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen by toughening the government’s stance on the country’s ethnic minorities, namely Muslims, since France has the largest Muslim population in Europe. Some feel that the rationale could be even less worthy. Chirac is mired in financial scandal. His close associate and former premier, Alain Juppe was found guilty in February of corruption. Lawyers believe that Chirac himself may have to answer charges of corruption when he leaves office and loses his immunity as president. He may be calculating that is he can raise his stock high enough with the electorate, by playing on their worst prejudices to force the permanent abandonment of any future legal action against him.
If Chirac’s opposition to American policy in Iraq, his limitation of the rights of France’s Muslim minority and his objection to Turkey in the EU because it is a country of 70 million Muslims, are all founded purely on the opportunity they have given him to boost his domestic standing, France’s record in the Middle East is seriously compromised.
Even the Greeks, Turkey’s historic enemy, accept the virtue of Turkish accession to the EU. But Chirac does not. France and Turkey are both members of NATO whose fundamental role remains the protection of Europe. Presumably Chirac believes that Turkish men can die in the defense of European and French interests but do not however merit consideration as EU citizens.
