On March 29, French President Emmanuel Macron met with leaders of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Élysée Palace. Following the meeting, Le Figaro first reported that France is sending troops to northern Syria, and then re-wrote the caption that France might send troops – referring to members of the SDF as source for the news. A day before this happened, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that U.S. troops will retreat from Syria. This was followed by a telephone conversion between Trump and his French counterpart, and increasing cooperation with Turkey. Combined with statements made by the YPG, recent developments have made it seem that France will take the place of the U.S. if the latter retreats from the region.

Élysée Palace refuted the claims with the statement that France will send reinforcement units to Manbij. However, the statement also touched upon the target of reaching “stability,” particularly in the secure zone located in northeastern Syria within the framework of an inclusive and balanced order. This might implicate France’s possibility of coming up with an administration model for the Syrian Kurds living in the region nearby the Syria-Turkey border in case Manbij is included in Turkey’s field of control. Élysée Palace also announced that they hope to see the establishment of dialogue between the SDF and Turkey with the support of the international community.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reminded that his French counterpart remarked similar opinions during their one-on-one meeting and added: “We are deeply sorry about the latest statements coming from France, which we find wrong and hope to have stemmed from a misunderstanding. Those hosting the terror group members in a top-level office must know that this only means an antagonistic move against Turkey.”

The latest statements are far from being peculiar when considering the record of France in Syria, as the country has engaged in many atrocities in the Middle East. When France and the U.K. divided Arab territories into mandate governments according to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, France had Syria. Although the reports made after the Macron-SDF meeting were refuted, they still evoked memories of the French military’s invasion of Damascus 97 years ago. During France’s 20-year mandate government in Syria, the foundations of Syria’s future were laid. The mandate government divided the country into six regions and founded the “Special Forces of the Levant.” Comprising mostly of Nusayri and Druze soldiers, the Special Forces then formed the grounds of the Syrian Army. It is argued that the Nusayris gained dominance in the state despite being a minority group due to this ground laid by the French.

In 1970, Hafez al-Assad came to power by staging a military coup. In Syria, where more than 70 percent of the population is Sunni, the minority Nusayris ruled the country with the Baath regime, which is a peculiar combination of Arab nationalism and Soviet socialism. The French government and the Assad family always acted in favor of each other. Regardless of whoever came to power in France, this situation never changed. For instance, when Hafez committed the 1982 Hama massacre, socialist president François Mitterrand was serving his first term in Élysée, but he did not even issue a single condemnation to Assad. More, Hafez’s brother Rifaat al-Assad, the commanding officer allegedly responsible for the Hama massacre, moved to Paris after having tension with his older brother, and allegedly engaged in embezzlement and money laundering. He spent a serious amount on financing Channel Tunnel and received his residence permit thanks to that.

Republican President Jacques Chirac also displayed red-carpet treatment to Assad, who made his first visit abroad to Paris in 1998 after 30 years. In 1999, Chirac hosted Bashar al-Assad in Élysée before he had any official status. He was also the only western leader that attended the father Assad’s funeral one year later. Throughout all these decades, France has never shown any concern about the situation of Syrian Kurds, whom Assad deprived of citizenship. Plus, the country always supported Saddam Hussein, the perpetrator of the 1988 Halabja massacre. While Turkey opened its border gates after the Halabja massacre, France only accepted 500 Kurdish refugees. A French diplomat friend of mine was surprised at the fact that Turkey opened its borders without pursuing any form of screening. When I asked him how the French authorities selected people, he pointed to his teeth and said, “they look at their teeth.”

Although relations between Paris and Damascus hit a low after the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, who was Chirac’s close friend, Chirac’s successor Nicolas Sarkozy restored relations between the two countries. He hosted Bashar Assad three times while Assad paid return visits. However, the Arab Spring changed the course of events, as France could not foresee the phenomenon that started in Tunisia, where the Ben Ali dictatorship favored by France was overthrown. It can be contended that France showed such a hasty demeanor in Syria for this reason. The country favors dictatorial regimes, but as soon as their decline becomes obvious, it starts to criticize the same regimes. The statements issued by Élysée Palace regarding the Macron-SDF meeting stressed the male and female parity within the delegation. But they did not touch on the fact that many international NGOs issued various reports indicating that the YPG and PKK terror groups, which adopt an ideology with Stalinist and fascist elements, armed 10-year-old children and made 15-16 year-old children organize kamikaze attacks.

This must be the post-truth world. It seems to have started with Trump… He became the President of the US with a discourse against the global system, the same system Trump himself owes his wealth and power. Even the UK, the founding father of the liberal-capitalist system that is currently dominating the globe, is an opponent of the system! They have left a certain system with Brexit, after all. From now on, it seems that the politicians of the Western democracies addressing the public will try to prove that they are the opponents of the system and establishment.

This is indeed the buzzword of the French presidential elections. There isn’t even one candidate who is a proponent of the system! While all of the candidates claim that they are against it, each and every one of them accuses the others of being a proponent of the system. Looking at what each of them said, you can understand what they mean while talking about the system and what they are against. Otherwise, being just an opponent of the system is nothing but ambiguous. The discourses of Trump and the presidential candidates in France reveal that being against the system in Western democracies primarily means being against immigration with a hint of critique of globalization. A hollow and magical word which was created against the masses that shouldered the burden of 2008 financial crises and were desperate in the face of global capitalist system and technology! Moreover, the French have been governed by two contrasting figures, Hollande and Sarkozy, in the last 10 years and there were no differences, no changes. As change has lost its meaning, the experts of  political marketing provided a new product: being against the system.

Look at the left; firstly to Emmanuel Macron who seems to be leading the polls. ENA graduate, former employee of Rothschild Bank, never elected before, became the Minister of Economy of the Socialist Government by the will of President Hollande and garnered the support of the capitalists; yet, he is against the system. Isn’t that a bit odd? A student at Colombia University asked the “centrist” Emmanuel Macron whether he was anti-system. “It’s not enough to just claim that; we should observe how the system reacted to my candidacy. The establishment wanted to destroy me when I became a candidate,” he replied. Establishment, for Macron, is the Socialist Party, which didn’t support his candidacy and conducted a pre-selection process.

On the other hand, Socialist Party candidate Benoit Hamon, who is a proponent of the welfare state and has a pluralist rhetoric, says that he doesn’t want to maintain the system. Still, like Macron, he also served as a minister for more than two years in the current government. The third candidate on the left, former Trotskyist and senator, member of the Socialist Party since 1970, and a member of the European Parliament Jean-Luc Mélenchon is also against the system. He said “people are rejecting those who advocate the system that condemned them to death” and, turning towards the members of the press, added: “For instance, you are the system!”

The right-wing candidate François Fillon is also against the system! “My project will disrupt the order of those who benefit from the system,” he said. Fillon was the prime minister of the former French president Sarkozy. At first, it was revealed that Fillon made one of his businessman friends “gift” him three suits, each of them costing €13,000, while making another friend gift him two luxury watches. Then, it was found out that he had invented an imaginary job for his wife in the parliament, costing the taxpayers €800,000 over 30 years, and similarly “employing” his daughter and son for some years. He is now furious at the media, saying that it’s not the media that is to determine the next president.

What the system means for the far-right’s candidate and a member of the European Parliament Marine Le Pen is everything that stands against her party Front National, of course! Her promises offer more radical and structural reforms when compared to other candidates, that’s for sure. However, at this point, certain discourses which would be deemed scandalous a couple of years ago are now being uttered by politicians and intellectuals of both the classical right and left. It has become commonplace. Indeed, the Islamophobic approaches that were commenced over the burkini and headscarf, along with the anti-immigrant discourse, increased the power of Le Pen.

When her father Jean Marie Le Pen eliminated Socialist Party candidate Lionel Jospin in the first round and got to the runoff together with Chirac in 2002, this was a catastrophe for France. The father Le Pen had garnered 16.8% and 17.19% of the votes in the first and second rounds, respectively. According to the famous IFOP polls, today Marine Le Pen is expected to garner 22.5% of the total votes in the first round. Moreover, according to the same poll, this figure is only one point lower than Macron who seems to be leading the first round. Le Pen is ahead of Fillon (19.5%), Mélenchon (18.5%) and Hamon (7.5%), nevertheless. In a possible runoff, she may acquire twice the votes her father could in 2002. In a climate where the views of the far-right crept into both sides of the political spectrum and became normalized, Marine Le Pen who is deemed to be more moderate than her father is now a part of the system, not an outsider. Or, at least, it could be said that she has drawn the others into her system.

Le Pen’s most significant competitor Emmanuel Macron made a U-turn from his initial position at the very beginning of the election and, referring to Angela Merkel’s (in)famous statement, said “France is not a multicultural country.” When the Canadian prime minister was shown as an example on immigration, he said “I don’t agree with him. I would be much more authoritative in this issue.” Previously, these kinds of approaches would be perceived as something negative; now, it is not like that, not even a bit. Seeing that her rivals are using her discourses, Marine Le Pen felt the need to kick it up a notch and make the most assertive statement in the world: “During my presidency, there will never be a terrorist attack like those happened in Bataclan and Stade de France.” Considering all, the only candidate who seems to be an outsider to the system is the Socalist Party candidate Hamon. He was able to outmaneuver former Prime Minister Manuelle Valls who is known for Islamophobic remarks with votes from the suburbs in the pre-selection; however, he could not garner the same success in the campaign process.

While Jean Marie Le Pen wasn’t even allowed on TV, her daughter demanded the removal of the EU flag at the studio set as a precondition to her appearance on France’s most known TV channel TF1. Anti-EU sentiments were once an original discourse of her father; now, they are not. Both Le Pen and Mélenchon are promising to have a Frexit, making France, one of the two original founders of the EU, leave the international organization. It’s an interesting sight to behold; a politician of the far-right and a leftist are promising the same about the EU and we have precedence with Brexit. While they don’t want to exit the EU, Fillon is talking about the renegotiation of Schengen and Hamon is discussing that treaties should be revised. Therefore, it’s not easy to claim to be against the system and showing your difference.

If the predictions of the research companies are true and Le Pen is able to get to the runoff in France where a fourth of the voters are indecisive, Le Pen’s opponent will be elected president! For now, her most vigorous adversary is Macron; if this comes to pass, for the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic the largest political formations of the country, the Socialist Party and the Republicans, will be eliminated. He may become the president without being backed by a party, almost like Trump, and only by the support of the capitalists and political marketing. The vote he is to receive in the first round will be only a memory for him in the Elysée Palace.