The French military's role in supporting the Gaddafi-era army general, Khalifa Haftar, in his war-crime-ridden attempt to capture the Libyan capital is as well-documented as the use of Emirati planes and Russian snipers. Recently, however, during his forays into Beirut, President Emmanuel Macron has further spread France's rhetorical wings.
On the first of two trips to the shattered Lebanese capital, Macron said: "If France doesn't play its role, Iranians, Turks and Saudis will interfere with Lebanese domestic affairs, whose economic and geopolitical interests are likely to be to the detriment of the Lebanese."
In the meantime, French warships have been holding joint exercises with Greek ones amid an oil-drilling dispute off Cyprus, which Turkey claims violates its maritime borders.
Macron maintains that his dispute is not with Turks, but with Erdogan. This tactic has been tried before and failed. The problem is that in confronting UAE-backed forces in Libya, or upholding Palestinian rights in Jerusalem, or bombing the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Iraq, or targeting President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria, Erdogan has the full support of the Turkish army and all major Turkish political parties.
Why is Turkey being confronted now?
For all the domestic reservations over his role as president, Erdogan has created Turkey as an independent country whose armed forces are capable of confronting Russian forces in Syria and Libya, but one that keeps its place at the negotiating table with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Hearst.
Turkey's economy is the size of Saudi Arabia's, and its military is self-sustaining. Turkey started manufacturing high-technology drones when Israel and the US refused to supply them. It is forgotten today, but Israeli planes once trained on Turkish airfields because of the shortage of airspace back home, according to informed Turkish sources.
When it discovers gas in the Black Sea, Turkish companies have the technology to develop the fields and supply the domestic market - unlike Egypt, whose reliance on British, Italian and US companies means it reaps a fraction of the rewards from its gas fields, Hearst argued.
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