PDF Dosyası - Ankara Üniversitesi Kitaplar Veritabanı

DE GAULLE'S TURKEYEdouard SABLIER*Like most of the great fıgures that made History, Charles de Gaulle,who shaped the destiny of his country, was an historian himself. He couldnot ignore the similarity of fate that the centuries imposed on France andTurkey. During five hundred years, the two Nations had relations that theGeneral described as "usually happy, sometimes painful, but always exceptional".Painful they were when, faithfull to the Entente Cordiale France sidedwith Britain, whose aim at the time was to wreft away provinces fromthe Ottoman Empire. Thus French and Turks fought cach other during theGreat War."The relations were happy, said de Gaulle to the Turks,when your Sultans and our sovereigns agreed on their policies. Itwas Sultan Soliman (that you Turks cali "Kanuni", the "Legislator",but that we, French, stubbornly cali "The Magnificient") it wasSultan Soliman who sided with François Premier against theAustrian Empire. Soliman granted France extremely favourableconditions for settlement and trade, known as the "Capitulations". Itwas Selim the Third with Napoleon; Abdul Aziz an Napoleon theThird".The General would recall the interventions of the Ottoman navy torelieve the pressure exerted by the ennemtes of France during FrançoisPremier's captivity in Spain. In my native town of Nice, people frequentlyrefer to the presence of the Turkish fleet, keeping at distance the Englishvessels during the Revolution. And, if I am not mistaken, the wife ofSultan Soliman was also a native of Nice.De Gaulle vvould proundly recall that France was the first country inthe West to recognize modern Turkey, built by Atatürk to succeed, aftertremendous upheavals, the Ottoman Empire.Historian, Paris.103