Tensions With Turkey Boost French Arms Sales To East Mediterranean States

The French military has participated in a series of military exercises this year with Turkey’s rivals in the Eastern Mediterranean to signal Paris’ support of these countries in ongoing territorial disputes. Such support is also helping generate new arms sales for France.

French President Emmanuel Macron is a strong critic of Turkey’s foreign policy under his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, particularly concerning the treatment of Syrian Kurds, the Libyan conflict, and Ankara’s moves in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Turkey is locked in a dispute over the delineation of its maritime boundaries with Greece and where it can explore and drill for hydrocarbons in the Eastern Mediterranean. In widely opposed moves, Ankara drilled inside Cyprus’ economic exclusion zone (EEZ) and declared an enormous EEZ between its shores and northeast Libya’s across the Mediterranean. 

Tensions between Turkey and Greece increased when Turkey insisted on exploring for hydrocarbons in disputed waters claimed by Greece, sending the Oruc Reis research vessel with an escort of warships to do so. France showed its support for Greece by deploying two Dassault Rafale fighter jets to the Greek island of Crete along with a warship in August. 

Amid these tensions, Greece announced that it was expanding the size of its military. It turned to France to buy 18 Rafale jets (6 brand new and 12 second-hand ones that have already served in the French Air Force) for the Hellenic Air Force (HAL). Greece will be the first European country to buy the Rafale. 

Athens already reached a €260 million (approximately $305 million) deal with France to upgrade its existing fleet of Dassault Mirage 2000-5 fighters in December 2019. Upgrading that fleet and procuring Rafales will enable Athens to take its older Mirage 2000s out of service. 

Rafales flying alongside upgraded Mirage 2000-5s could sufficiently bolster the HAL’s fleet of F-16s, which are also scheduled to be upgraded in the next seven years, and pose a significant obstacle to any attempts by Turkey to establish air superiority over the Aegean Sea or parts of the East Mediterranean. 

France has also made some new arms deals with another nation worried about Turkey’s moves in these areas. 

In February, the Republic of Cyprus reached a $262 million arms deal with France for short-range Mistral infrared homing man-portable air-defense systems and Exocet anti-ship missiles. The deal also commits France to modernizing Cyprus’ limited air defense capabilities. 

France also held exercises with Nicosia that month in which the French flagship, the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, participated. The French military also participated in an exercise with Cyprus, along with Greece and Italy, in the Eastern Mediterranean as recently as late August amid the latest East Mediterranean tensions. 

Of course, these arms deals pale in comparison to the ones France has made with Egypt in recent years. 

Since the rise to power of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt has been a major rival of Erdogan’s Turkey, which had embraced his Muslim Brotherhood predecessor who Sisi had overthrown in a coup in July 2013. 

Under Sisi, Egypt rapidly became a major multi-billion euro French arms client. His country was the first to buy Rafale jets, along with four Gowind corvettes, a FREEM multipurpose frigate, and two Mistral-class amphibious assault ships.

There were, noticeably, no strings, such as calls for political reforms or ending of rampant human rights violations, attached to Cairo’s stupendous purchases of all this advanced French military hardware.

That hardware has significantly increased Egypt’s ability to project power in the East Mediterranean and challenge Turkey’s navy and its expansionist goals there.

So long as these territorial disputes and tensions between these countries and Turkey remain unresolved, France isn’t likely going to have any shortage of arms clients in the Eastern Mediterranean anytime soon.