How Algeria-Turkey Ambitious Strategic Rapprochement Will Affect France's Sahel Policy?

• Author: Toumi, Abdennour
• Position: COMMENTARY

Introduction

The year 2021 is ending with drastic diplomatic developments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region with Algeria-Turkey relations improving. This is following the announcement of Algeria's Energy Minister, Mohammed Arkab, in October 2021 that the country will form a new partnership with Turkey in the energy and mining sectors, under Algeria's new hydrocarbons regulations. The project's total financial cost is $1.4 billion, with Renaissance Holding owning a 66 percent stake and Sonatrach owning 34 percent and it aims to produce polypropylene plastic to be used in several industries, including cars and textiles. This was followed by Algerian Minister of Industry, Ahmed Zeghdar's active participation in the Turkey-Africa Business and Economy Forum in Istanbul showing that Algiers is looking East. The Algeria-Turkey deal was launched in January 2020 following the state visit of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Algeria soon after the election of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in December 2019. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to the country raised Algeria's strategic importance for Turkey to a new higher level. The Turkish government had offered key economic and cultural incentives to Algeria, while both countries were holding onto their socio-economic and geo-economics needs and interests. Among those that are working to poison the two countries' trust in each other are the radical secularists in the national media, notably the print Francophone and even radical nationalists, (1) who have been tarnishing Turkey's leadership in the region, using fallacious arguments that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a 'Neo-Sultan' who is smoothly moving his pawns in the region and beyond.

The continuing moral diplomatic crisis between Algiers and Paris was provoked by President Emmanuel Macron's decisions and statements, made for the consumption of the French electorate, regarding the thorny question of the deportation of illegal immigrants from the Maghreb and Sahel back to their countries of origin. On this issue, Algerian diplomatic authorities in France have been refusing to pursue the deportation process for legal and national security issues. (2) Consequently, Paris responded with severe restrictions to granting visas to citizens from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Nevertheless, Algiers did apply the principle of reciprocity. But the tipping point in the tumultuous relations between the two countries was undoubtedly the amateurish statement of President Macron about the history of the Algerian nation made when the French president met with a group of young people of Algerian descent, in an electoral operation supposed to charm them. (3)

The Tipping Point

Chronologically, since the election of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, Algeria-France relations did shift from a tone of 'love-and-hate' to 'wait-and-see.' President Emmanuel Macron and the deep state's influential lobbies in Paris did not swallow the fall of late President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's system and the oligarchs, who had sponsored President Macron's presidential campaign in 2017. They counted on the ramifications of the 2019 Hirak Movement, hoping that the relations between the two countries would continue with business as usual. (4)

On the contrary, the new authorities in Algiers, military and civilian alike, established the diplomatic tone and the political behavior, showing new imperatives. Starting with the new military doctrine established in the amended Constitution of November 2020, (5) and followed by the setting of new foreign policy determinants and objectives. Within these was expressed the desire for the demystification of Algeria-France relations at every level and the need for Algiers to follow a new diplomatic paradigm of multiplication of partnerships based on mutual respect. This allows Algiers to choose its strategic allies according to the country's national security and economic interests-a move that Paris did not want to see.

Considering that Algiers did not hesitate to take action against Paris over the visas dispute compounded with Macron's statement against the Algerian authorities and the nation's millennium of historical existence. On the existence of Algeria's nation and eventually state-prominent French historians, such as Professor Benjamin Stora, reminded the French president that during the Ottoman era in Algeria, France had appointed 61 Consuls from 1516 to 1830. (6) Algiers responded by recalling its ambassador from Paris and banning French military aircraft from Algeria's airspace. The narration of the story is a changing of post-independence relations between the two countries, where Algeria has shifted in its policy toward France, which will facilitate better relations between Turkey and Algeria.

What President Emmanuel Macron did-provoking Algerian leaders with a solemn meeting with the Harki community (7) in the presidential Elysee Palace, imposing harsh measures on visas, and making a derogatory statement about the Algerian nation's history-all demonstrate the ideologized foreign policy of the French president towards Algeria. This motivated the pro-Turkey advocates in Algeria and abroad to fix a credible trajectory against the idealist foreign policy and the neo-colonial paradigm of Macron toward the Maghreb and African Sahel.

In this context, the new leaders in Algeria seem to have found a way to breakthrough over the country's decades-long 'abnormal' relations with France, positioning themselves as serious partners and no longer subordinates. A leadership mentality that the new leaders in Algeria are taking into consideration in recent developments in the African Sahel, as well as the resurgence of Algeria's active and preemptive diplomacy in the African continent, is to a large extent excluding Paris. (8)

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