"Azerbaijan-Türkiye alliance will ruin Macron's game in the Caucasus"
Foreign experts on Caliber.Az

INTERVIEWS  04 March 2024 - 14:29

"France has become the main supporter of terrorism," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during an address to the nation in Aydin province. He said the French cement company Lafarge is building terrorist safe havens in northern Syria and lamented that France is the main supporter of terrorism.

"We have destroyed all the shelters built by ‘Lafarge’ in northern Syria and we will not stop, that's all!" the leader of the brotherly country said.

Commenting on President Erdogan's statement for Caliber.Az, Turkish international political scientist, candidate of political sciences Kerim Has noted that Türkiye certainly sees France's actions as a threat, including in the South Caucasus.

"The aggressiveness of French policy and its military is well known to Türkiye since the times of the Ottoman Empire. At that time, the Turkish military had to tame Paris' ambitions in the Middle East, where France periodically tried to insert itself and consolidate its influence," the political scientist said.

However, he recently said that there was a new round of French military and political expansion to the East.

"France's ambitions were quite clearly manifested in the Cyprus issue, where France became the main supporting force for Greece, thus increasing tension and confrontation in the Mediterranean region, creating a hotbed of strife and conflict. Although Athens and Ankara could solve the disputes in a bilateral dialogue. France is also supporting Kurdish terrorists, seeking to create another headache for Ankara.

And now we see France beginning to actively arm Yerevan, essentially fuelling Armenia's unhealthy ambitions and creating risks of new military clashes in the South Caucasus. There is no desire for peace in this, such dirty game leads only to destabilisation of the situation in the region, which, of course, cannot but worry Azerbaijan and Türkiye. Our countries in their attempts to create peace in this region are once again facing a threat from outside," the Turkish political analyst believes.

According to Kazakhstani political scientist Atbek Aitmatov, if one examines modern French politics in detail, one can simply be amazed at how much emphasis on destructiveness and promotion of "chaos policy" in various parts of the planet has increased since Macron's arrival.

"Even if we take for example the same former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is often accused of defeating the Gaddafi regime, which allegedly led to the destabilisation of the whole of North Africa, we can now clearly see how Macron wants to spread militarism and xenophobia in Eurasia. Having been defeated in his colonies, Macron is trying to take colonial actions in normal, civilised countries, including the South Caucasus. His appetites also extend to Central Asia. Macron has already managed to tour all the countries of the region and conduct his chain of intrigues," the political scientist stressed.

He also said that the French president didn’t have the resources to reshuffle political figures and create metropolises subordinate to Paris, as has been the case for centuries in Africa.

"Macron does not have the same degree of influence and ability to build political partnership blocs as previous French leaders. He is extremely weak and reflexive as a politician, he does not have a strong political will - all this leads to the fact that Macron's France is only able to wreak havoc and weave intrigues, trying to somehow promote its influence in this or that region. Where is the wisdom of Presidents De Gaulle, Mitterrand or Chirac?

This includes the game Macron is playing in the South Caucasus. Having latched on to a weak point - Armenian chauvinism, which is ready to do anything to satisfy its ambitions, Macron intends to satisfy his own ambitions at their expense. By pumping arms into Armenia, he apparently believes that he can use Armenians to undermine the positive influence of Azerbaijan and Türkiye in the region,” the Kazakh expert said.

“For example, to provoke a new war and, intervening in it on the side of Yerevan, manipulate the situation in the South Caucasus. But this is where Macron's shortsightedness as a politician and strategist comes to light - he does not realise that Azerbaijan has already created its own security configuration in the South Caucasus, which takes into account almost all possible risks of a military-political nature. And the alliance between Azerbaijan and Türkiye will eventually destroy Macron's unscrupulous game in the South Caucasus region - there will be no other scenario," Aitmatov said.

Caliber.Az