Turks in France
The majority of French Turks descend from the Republic of Turkey; however there has also been Turkish migration from other post-Ottoman countries including ethnic Turkish communities which have come to France from North Africa (especially Algeria and Tunisia), the Balkans (e.g. from Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Romania), the island of Cyprus, and more recently Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria.
[9] According to Jean Marteilhe "…the Turks of Asia and Europe...of whom there are a great many in the galley of France, who have been made slaves by the Imperialists, and sold to the French to man their galleys… are generally well-made, fair in feature, wise in their conduct, zealous in the observance of their religion, honourable and charitable in the highest degree.
[10] France signed a bilateral labour recruitment agreement with Turkey on 8 May 1965[11] because the number of entrants from other countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal was not sufficient.
[16] There is a strong Turkish presence in Île-de-France (especially in Paris), Nord-Pas-de-Calais (mainly in the cities of Calais, Lille, and Roubaix), Rhône-Alpes (especially in Lyon), Alsace (mainly in Strasbourg) and Lorraine.
[1] Similarly, Professor İzzet Er,[24] and the French-Armenian politician Garo Yalic (who is an advisor to Valerie Boyer),[29] also said that there was 1,000,000 Turks in France in 2011 and 2012 respectively.
More recently, numerous reports have suggested that the Turkish-French population exceeds one million, including Le Petit Journal in 2019[26] and Marianne in 2020.
[3] Although the birth rates among Turks living in France has declined over the years they remain substantially higher than the French population.
[30] In 2000, Mehmet-Ali Akıncı and Harriet Jisa found that Turkish is spoken exclusively at home by 77% of families, while 68% of children speak French to one another.
[43][44] French Turks have contributed in many ways to the arts, academia, cinema, television, music and sports in both France and Turkey.
For example, the renowned photographer Gökşin Sipahioğlu, who founded the Paris-based photo agency Sipa Press, was dubbed "le Grand Turc" in the French media and was appointed the Knight of the Legion of Honour by president Jacques Chirac in 2007.
[54] Notable Turkish-French academics include Dr Ipek Yalcin Christmann who is a neurobiologist in charge of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research;[55] Erol Gelenbe who is a professor in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College; Nilüfer Göle who is a professor of sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales;[56] Doğan Kuban who is Professor of Ottoman Architecture and History at Istanbul Technical University;[57] the historian Nora Şeni is a professor at the Institut français de géopolitique;[58] and Semih Vaner who was founder and president of the "French Association for the Study of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Turkish-Iranian World" (AFEMOTI), Director of the "Study Group on Contemporary Turkey and Iran (ERTCI)", and Director of "Study notebooks on the Eastern Mediterranean and the Turkish-Iranian world" (CEMOTI).
Non-fiction Turkish-French writers include Elif Shafak who was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2010;[59] the novelist Nedim Gürsel who teaches contemporary Turkish literature at the Sorbonne;[60] Seyhan Kurt who is a poet, writer, anthropologist and sociologist; and the novelist Kenizé Mourad who descends from the exiled Ottoman royal family and is of partial Turkish descent; her bestselling book Regards from the Dead Princess: Novel of a Life sold more than 3 million copies in France and tells the story of the end of the Ottoman Empire through the eyes of her mother Princess Selma.
[62] Most obvious are the large number of male Turkish-French football players, including Emre Akbaba, Aksel Aktas, Kubilay Aktaş, Mikail Albayrak, Fatih Atik, Numan Bostan, Umut Bozok, Ozkan Cetiner, İbrahim Dağaşan, Mustafa Durak, Mevlüt Erdinç, Ayhan Güçlü, Metehan Güçlü, Ender Günlü, Serdar Gürler, Selim Ilgaz, Burak Kardeş, Samed Kılıç, Özer Özdemir, Sinan Özkan, Hakan Özmert, Fatih Öztürk, Yusuf Sari, Atila Turan, Kendal Ucar, Sabahattin Usta, Serkan Yanık and Yakup Ramazan Zorlu.
[71][72] There are also notable Syrian Turks in France; for example, the French singer, Armande Altaï, was born in Aleppo to a Turkish mother.
[66] Another notable French singer of Turkish-Syrian origin is Mennel Ibtissem, who gained fame after being a contestant on The Voice France.
[73] Farouk Mardam-Bey, who is from the prominent Turkish Syrian Mardam Bey family,[74] is the director of the Arab world collections at the French publishing house Actes Sud.
