French President Nicholas Sarkozy ... PINOCCHIO

French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s visit this week to Algeria received public attention in Turkey just as it did throughout the world.

On this visit for a gathering of eight ministers and 150 businessmen, Sarkozy realized he had the title of president of a country responsible for the killing of 1.5 million innocent people. After having subjected the country’s people to inhuman treatment and murder, French interest in Algeria’s rich oil and natural gas reserves is still intact.


This was the reason for Sarkozy’s visit. The most important reason -- perhaps the only reason -- for his offering a hand of cooperation to an African country was the natural gas and oil reserves there. During the speeches he delivered while in Algeria, the French president made truly odd statements. For instance, he found colonialism very unjust and condemned it, telling Algerian businessmen, “The colonial system was, yes, totally unfair and also ran completely counter to the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity on which our republic is based.” He also confessed that the 132-year French rule in Algeria was very unjust, saying, “I, who was seven years old in 1962, commemorate the victims with heartfelt respect.” He stressed that he was only a kid during those massacres, implicitly saying, “What am I to blame if my father did all those things?”

 One could conclude upon reading his statements that France regrets all those centuries of exploiting this country. So, does France really regret the years of exploitation? Is it basing its policies on condemning exploitation? Of course not! It is possible to say that Algeria is very lucky because they are able to establish ties with France at the presidential level though France took the lives of hundreds of thousands of its people. Other exploited countries are not so lucky. It cannot be said that France treats all the countries it has exploited in the past in such a civilized way.

 Even though Sarkozy makes such remarks as “it was unfair” and “we regret it” France’s colonialism still continues. They have never granted African countries, which have the world’s richest diamond and gold mines, the chance to manage their own resources. A great majority of the diamond mines in Africa are still managed and used by French and other European companies and what they leave behind for these poor Africans is an amount of money hardly enough to live on.


Let’s listen to what the general coordinator of Samanyolu News, Metin Yıkar, who returned from his visit to the Central African Republic a few days ago, has to say, as he has the freshest news for us: “The Central African Republic has never been given the chance to benefit from its own diamond and gold mines, the richest ones in the world. Their diamond mines are still managed and used by France and other European countries, whereas Africans are able to find food just enough to survive.

Nobody can make any future plans. They cannot produce anything at all. They can’t even produce a match box. What they do everyday is try to find food to survive another day. People have been programmed to demand rather than to produce. The official language is French and the local tongues cannot even be taught at schools. The administration always has pro-French and French-educated elements. Whenever things start going wrong, someone from the opposition is given monetary and military support to spark a years-long civil war and then, following a coup d’état, they install someone who serves their interests following a coup d’état to take part in the administration again.”


Whenever the issue of Algeria is brought up, Sarkozy implicitly says, “I was only seven at the time, and why should I pay the price for those things?” However, he doesn’t shy away from holding everybody in Turkey responsible for things that occurred during the time of my great-great-grandfather. While trying to get off the hook by attempting to leave the Algerian incidents to be discussed by historians, he doesn’t even mention the massacre of 500,000 people in Rwanda and the currently ongoing French colonialism in Africa.

 And on top of all this, he delivers speeches in big halls where he says what an unfair thing exploitation is, while his country continues exploiting Africa. Just as the wealth of all other colonialist countries, France’s wealth, too, comes from the pillage and plunder of the rich natural resources of African countries. Just like Pinocchio, Sarkozy’s nose grows as he speaks.

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