France will choose its new president in April of this year. Current president Emmanuel Macron has not yet announced his candidacy, but he is expected to announce it officially soon. There are around 40 candidates who will run for the election.

The presidency is the strongest organ of the country’s two-headed executive branch. Thus, the French presidential election attracts a global interest as French presidents determine the country’s foreign policy and domestic politics.

While far-right politicians in France have been already mobilized, Macron, who was elected in 2017 with great expectations, wants to be re-elected. No prediction for a future election is easy, and neither is predicting whether Macron will be elected again. To this end, we need to have a brief look at Macron’s four-year term in office.

Macron’s failed tests

Emmanuel Macron faced many challenges in domestic politics after he was elected in 2017. The yellow vests protests and the COVID-19 pandemic were the most important tests. In November 2018, civil protests broke out against the rising fuel prices and living costs. The police response was violent and used disproportionate force against civilians participating in the protests, leading to severe criticism of the Macron administration.

The Macron government did not prevent the excessive violence by the security forces, but on the contrary, made legal arrangements for the use of violence. The General Security Law emerged as a reaction to the protests and was approved in France’s National Assembly, empowering security forces and justifying the use of excessive force to defend and protect themselves.

Macron failed another test in the fight against the COVID19 pandemic. His administration couldn’t efficiently overcome the socio-economic problems that emerged due to the pandemic, reducing confidence in Macron’s leadership. As a result, La République En Marche! (LREM) founded by Macron suffered a great defeat in the municipal and regional elections that took place in 2020 and 2021, respectively. LREM fell short of expectations and lost big cities such as Lyon, Marseille, and Paris to the Greens and Socialists, respectively.

Islamophobic aspects of the candidates

The Islamophobic views of prominent candidates such as Macron, Le Pen, and Zemmour in the lead-up to the election point to a serious threat to Muslims in the country. In fact, the marginalization and securitization of Muslims in France since the September 11 terrorist attacks reveal that the French governments follow an institutionally Islamophobic stance.

The Islamophobic views of prominent candidates such as Macron, Le Pen, and Zemmour in the lead-up to the election point to a serious threat to Muslims in France.

More recently, Macron’s government has closed down 17 mosques with vague claims of violating security laws or not meeting the required safety standards, and has surveyed nearly 90 mosques. Moreover, the government pressured the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) to sign a charter of “Republican values” as a part of its so-called French Islam project.

With elections drawing near, the French government is looking for ways to appeal to far-right voters. For instance, on February 5, 2022, they officially introduced the Forum of Islam in France (FORIF) that took over from the CFCM. What’s controversial about this forum is that all its members will be handpicked by the government, evidently undermining the political representation of Muslims in the country.

As part of their far-right ideology Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour are quite notorious for holding both Islamophobic and anti-Semitic stances. Both oppose the presence of Islam and Muslims in France. More extreme than Le Pen, Zemmour calls for the assimilation of Muslims and demands that French Muslims renounce their faith.

Muslims in France are struggling to decide which candidate to vote for in the election. Whatever the outcome of the election is, difficult days lie ahead for French Muslims, which comprise around 10 percent of the population. The worst-case scenario is a far-right candidate coming to power. Then Muslims would face innumerable difficulties including facing more violent acts in the coming years.

How might the election results affect relations with Turkey?

It seems that two political/ideological factions stand out in the French presidential elections. The first is the relatively moderate line represented by Macron, and the other is the far-right line represented by Le Pen and Zemmour. If Macron is re-elected, as seems probable at the moment, the current tense atmosphere in Turkish-French relations may continue. More specifically the tensions in Libya, Syria, and the Eastern Mediterranean, where the concerned parties are in direct confrontation, are likely to remain.

The second scenario would be catastrophic. If the far right comes to power in France, then, there would be a paradigm shift in France’s relations with Turkey. Turkish-French relations cannot remain healthy under a Turkophobic and Islamophobic government. In such a scenario, ideological motives would dominate the relationship and the bilateral relations may come to a breaking point. Therefore, Macron’s victory in the presidential election seems the more preferable option for Turkey.

France was shocked when Jean Marie Le Pen, who was the leader of the far-right party and never invited to be on any television channel in France, went into the second round against Jacques Chirac with 16.86% of votes in the 2002 presidential elections. Expectedly, Chirac was elected president with 82.21% in the second round; meanwhile Le Pen could only increase his vote to 17.79%.

But, according to the newspaper headlines, this was a shameful event and a great disaster for France! This was because Le Pen, who was prosecuted for inciting xenophobia and for his statement that gas chambers were “a mere detail” in the history of World War II, achieved a great success considering he could only win 0.74% of votes in 1974 when he first ran.

That’s all water under the bridge now. Over the last 20 years, far-right ideas have flourished and bloomed. They have even ceased to be “far-right ideas” as they have become pretty common. An ambiguous xenophobia against Africans, Arabs, and sometimes people coming from countries in the European Union was replaced by an overt hatred of Islam and hostility towards Muslims. This new xenophobia moved to the center of politics and gained serious ground in both left-wing and right-wing politics.

French Minister of Higher Education Frédérique Vidal, who gave an interview to CNews channel after Blanquer, said, “Islamo-leftism causes social collapse and I think universities as a part of the society are not free of its grip.” Not only that, Vidal also called on the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) to conduct a study on the “Islamo-Gauchisme [French term of Islamo-leftism] effect and its impact on studies on the decolonization process” in universities.

There are many examples of the so-called valorous breakthroughs in the name of Islamophobia that started in the 2000s. An influential figure in left-wing politics, feminist intellectual and philosopher Élizabeth Badinter, in an interview to the newspaper Le Monde during socialist President Hollande’s incumbency stated, “Don’t be afraid of being accused of being Islamophobic; I’m not afraid, no one should be afraid.” She had also secured the support of Prime Minister Manuel Valls at the time.

Before that, one of the founders of the highly circulated right-wing magazine Le Point, Claude Imbert said in slightly more timid words, “To be honest, I’m a bit Islamophobic,” while Françoise Laborde, a former Radical Party of the Left senator who later joined Macron’s party, said, “Frankly, I like being called Islamophobic.” These are only a taste of what’s going on.

With his talent as a writer, Zemmour expresses in a vulgar but impactful way what others could only whisper or insinuate. He is a republican after all, albeit being “radical” or “overzealous” for some. In France, the definitions of secularism, republicanism, and “Civilization” – whether used together or separately – are extraordinarily useful euphemisms for anti-Islamic sentiment and hostility towards Muslims. When it comes to Muslims, Zemmour’s far-right ideological position of “Civilization and the Republic,” Marine Le Pen’s emphasis on “Secularism,” and a socialist or a right-wing politician’s discourse of “Republicanism, Secularism” or “Civilization” are not different at all.

As a matter of fact, Macron’s “Anti-Separatism Bill” was renamed “Principles Strengthening Respect for the Laws of the Republic” after receiving backlash across the world for being Islamophobic; however, it retained its content. In other words, the state does not openly say “give up your Islamic identity” like Zemmour, but does its best to make Muslims live their faith in their inner world and make their physical attachment to their religion invisible.

The French public is subject to constant manipulation; the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP), one of the leading research institutions in France, for instance, published a survey last month based on students’ responses to the question “Have you observed any behavioral patterns at school that show signs of religious belonging?” Zemmour, then, justified his thesis through this survey.

Horrendous cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed being projected on government buildings or Muslim children being forced to look at these cartoons as a part of their education, and two 10- or 11-year-old students who refused to look at these cartoons being taken from their homes with their families and being subjected to investigation is not dissimilar to what Zemmour promises.

Eric Zemmour announced and propagated this discourse and his racist comments by writing for mainstream media outlets like Le Quotidien de Paris and Le Figaro, along with appearing on prime-time shows on channels such as RTL and France 2. Although he faced trial and was convicted twice, it is not possible to claim that he has faced a hostile response to his person. In the last 20 years, he has become a celebrity in political and economic circles. For two years, he was working at CNews, the news channel controlled by the Catholic businessman Vincent Bolloré, who previously supported Macron.

Eric Zemmour announced and propagated this discourse and his racist comments by writing for mainstream media outlets like Le Quotidien de Paris and Le Figaro, along with appearing on prime-time shows on channels such as RTL and France 2.

Despite all this, there is something about Zemmour that renders him unique. Born in 1958 to an Algerian Jewish family, at his first official political rally on December 5, 2021 he boasted of his minority background, describing himself as a “little Berber Jew from the other side of the Mediterranean.” Zemmour, who was educated at a private Jewish school located in a Parisian suburb, says he practices his faith but does not consider himself Orthodox. However, this is not what makes him unique – he is accused of turning historical events on their head, while some describe him as an “anti-Semitic Jew.”

Indeed, Zemmour claimed that “Dreyfus may not be innocent,” [referring to the political scandal riddled with anti-Semitism known as “Dreyfus affair”] and Philippe Petain, who was president during the Nazi occupation between 1940 and 1944, was actually watching over the French Jews! Shocking at first glance, Zemmour’s connection to anti-Semitic history seems to be his far-right ideology, and the anti-Semitic vein at the base of the far-right may have tactically compelled him to make such comments. Indeed, 93-year-old former far-right party leader Le Pen also declared that he supports Zemmour instead of his daughter. “The only difference between Éric and me is that he is a Jew. It’s hard to call him a Nazi or a fascist. It gives him more freedom,” Le Pen said.

On the other hand, there may be another element to explain his shocking historical “revisionism.” In France, there is a publication called Causeur, which was first established as a website by the Sephardic Jewish journalist and writer Élisabeth Lévy. Causeur has been publishing as a monthly magazine for several years now and is deemed a right-wing and far right-wing publication. Alain Finkielkraut, another one of the magazine’s founders, is one of the country’s most influential and prominent philosophers and of Jewish origin, who is known for being “just like Lévy, but more of an Islamophobe.”

Lévy, in the article titled “Salomon, Will You Vote for Zemmour?” states that Zemmour is the talk after synagogue services. She relays that while part of the congregation says, “aren’t you be ashamed to support him, so you’re going to vote for a Petainist,” others say “Zemmour is our savior.” Due to France’s foreign policy discourse or despite the protection offered by legislation against anti-Semitism, the rise of Islamophobia causes tensions between Arab and Jewish children in the suburbs, especially in Paris. Lévy extracts that while many institutions and organizations of the Jewish community condemn Zemmour for his views and allegations, Jewish families residing in the suburbs see him as a “savior” or even as the “last exit before exile.”

According to polls, with 14-17% of the vote, Zemmour is unlikely to become president. However, in a country where far-right parties and ideas are indisputably on the rise, he will retain a significant voter base and will continue to inflame the debates along with consolidating the anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim rhetoric.