In 1396, Jean Le Maingre, the Marshal of France, took part in the joint French–Hungarian crusade against the Ottoman Turks, which suffered a heavy defeat on September 28 at the Battle of Nicopolis.

[4] In December 1525 a second mission was sent, led by John Frangipani, which managed to reach Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, with secret letters asking for the deliverance of king Francis I and an attack on the Habsburg.

The contacts were further enhanced, especially in a commercial viewpoint, with the capitulations granted by the sultan in 1535 and starting with Jean de la Forest in that year, France had an ambassadorial representative in Turkey ever since.

These privileged trading conditions were to mark the relations, both in commercial terms and beyond, till their abolition with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, and to gradually increasing disadvantage and decreasing leverage for the Ottomans.

[citation needed] The first Turkish representative invested with an extended period mission to the Parisian court was Yirmisekiz Mehmed Çelebi, in the beginning of the 18th century, at a time when the Ottoman Empire sought to grasp the reasons for its loss of prominence as compared to the European powers.

Apart from those involved in politics and diplomacy, also the authors and their immediate public during the various successive stages of modern Turkish literature overwhelmingly had the French language as their primary Western reference.

[8] Although there are fewer Turks today who learn French as their sole foreign language, its knowledge is still very well represented among the intelligentsia and as such, highly valued, often considered a privilege by those who have command of it.

The recently growing immigrant communities of Turkish origin, at all levels of the society, in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada also helped strengthen the position of the knowledge of French in Turkey, both in qualitative and quantitative terms.

In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that “ As far as the relationship with the European Union is concerned, it is clear that recent developments and choices do not allow any progression of the process in which we are engaged”.

In 2003, according to the Turkish Treasury, there were 270 French enterprises in Turkey, corresponding to significant market shares in automotive, construction —especially for the production of electricity—, cement, insurance, distribution and pharmaceutical industries.

[12] Following approval of a French bill on 22 December 2011 that would make denial of the Armenian genocide a crime punishable by one-year prison sentence and a fine of €45,000 (about $61,387), the Turkish government froze bilateral relations and political meetings with France.

[25] In November 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron criticized the Turkish invasion of north-eastern Syria, describing the offensive as contributing to "brain death" in NATO by undermining coordination between allies.

[26] In October 2020, after Samuel Paty was beheaded by an Islamist terrorist for showing caricatures of Mohammed during a lecture about freedom of expression,[27] the two presidents clashed again in their comments about the murder.

[29] The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo subsequently published a cover depicting a debauched Erdoğan, which elicited threats from the Turkish government of "legal, diplomatic actions" concerning its publication.