As the French presidential election heads into a run-off, it's probably not surprising that Ankara is quietly but emphatically rooting for Socialist candidate Francois Hollande to defeat the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. Under Sarkozy, Turkish-French relations have been extremely strained, with the French President expressing his strong opposition to Turkey's European Union membership bid and also helping introduce a few months ago an ultimately unsuccessful bill that would have criminalized the denial of the Armenian genocide. On the foreign policy, front, meanwhile, Paris and Ankara have also frequently clashed in recent years, in particular with the two vying for influence in the Middle East. For example, after the end of the NATO operation last year in Libya, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Sarkozy were in a race to see which one of them could make it to Tripoli first and become the first major foreign leader to visit the newly liberated country. Sarkozy ended up winning the contest, arriving in the Libyan capitol only a day before Erdogan.
So what would a Socialist victory in France mean for Turkey? The National takes a look: