“Turkey and France are two friendly and allied countries. And they will remain so. We must ensure that no misunderstanding comes to disturb this relationship of friendship to which we are sincerely attached,” wrote the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, last month in the French newspaper L’Opinion ahead of a meeting with his French counterpart. It was only a few months earlier that Turkey’s President Erdoğan had questioned France’s President Macron’s mental health in a speech. The two men have a history of making harsh remarks about each other.
When a catastrophic explosion at Beirut’s port rocked Lebanon on 4 August 2020 and brought the tiny Middle Eastern country to the attention of the international public, Joe Biden had not yet been elected as US president. Nor was Turkey struggling to repair its political ties with the West. The blast, caused by tons of ammonium nitrate, hit large swathes of Beirut and affected the whole of Lebanon. The tragedy came at a time when the country had been battered by anti-government protests, beginning in October 2019, as well as rising coronavirus cases and an economic downturn resulting in an unprecedented devaluation of the Lebanese pound against the US dollar. The tragic episode was immediately followed by top-rank visits by French and Turkish government figures. Macron rushed to Beirut and pledged support for the reconstruction of the city. He not only promised humanitarian aid but also called on Lebanese politicians to adopt “a new political deal”. He would return to the Lebanese capital three weeks later, this time to urge the country’s politicians to form a reform government, and give them a deadline by which he wanted this to happen.
Only two days after Macron’s visit, a Turkish delegation including Fuad Oktay, top aide to Erdoğan, and Çavuşoğlu, arrived in Beirut. Having met with President Michel Aoun, Prime Minister Hassan Diab and the parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, Oktay drew attention to the medical and food supplies that he had brought and emphasised Turkey’s continued support for Lebanon. Oktay also offered Lebanese authorities temporary use of the Turkish port of Hatay until the blast-hit Beirut port was back in operation.
