Insight Turkey
Insight Turkey
Challenging ideas
On Turkish politics and International affairs

Author

Tsilla Hershco

Dr., Senior Research Associate BESA Center, Israel, t.hershco@gmail.com
Tsilla Hershco
Sarkozy’s Policy in the Middle-East: A Break with the Past?
April 1, 2009
Nicolas Sarkozy’s election as France’s president in May 2007 has marked a rhetorical change in the foreign policy of Paris and has made the French presidency much more dynamic. Sarkozy has led many international initiatives and increased France’s presence in international and Middle Eastern arenas. Despite all these developments, however, France’s Middle-Eastern policy has been characterized by a large degree of continuity since Sarkozy has embraced traditional French perceptions and agenda concerning the Middle East. Thus, he has continued France’s so-called ‘Arab policy’, and mainly pursued past policies on key regional issues such as the Israeli-Arab conflict. Consequently, Sarkozy’s declarations concerning the changing nature of French policy do not seem fully compatible with reality. So far there has also been a gap between France’s optimistic assessment of the results of its Middle Eastern policy versus the less impressive outcomes on the ground.

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