French President Francois Hollande was scheduled to head to Turkey yesterday on his first trip abroad since his dramatic announcement on Saturday that he had split from his longstanding partner Valerie Trierweiler.
Hollande’s visit is the first by a French head of state in 22 years and reflects a thaw in once-frosty ties, although it comes as Turkey is battling its worst political crisis in over a decade.
However, much of the attention may focus on the ending of his “shared life” with Trierweiler, two weeks after a tabloid revealed he was having an affair with a younger actress, Julie Gayet.
The 59-year-old Socialist president, who was with Trierweiler for seven years, has come under fire from opponents for getting embroiled in such a public scandal about his love life.
Hollande’s goal in Turkey will be to try to fix damaged political and economic ties, bringing with him seven ministers and a 40-strong delegation of business leaders.
Relations took an icy turn under his right-wing predecessor, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was vehemently opposed to Muslim-majority Turkey joining the European club.
And they hit an all-time low after French lawmakers passed a bill in 2011 making it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I constituted genocide.
Although the legislation was later declared invalid by France’s constitutional court, it severely damaged business ties.
Hollande, the first president to visit Turkey since former French president Francois Mitterrand in 1992, is on a mission “to put things right,” according to his entourage.
Meanwhile, Trierweiler, 48, went ahead with a two-day charity mission to India planned while she was still France’s first lady.
She began the trip by visiting a facility in Mumbai for premature babies and appeared relaxed as she braved a media scrum at the hospital, but declined to talk about her private life.
Wearing a dark blue dress and heels, she insisted would only talk about her work promoting French charity Action Contre la Faim (Action Against Hunger).
“It’s very impressive to see these babies of less than 1 kilogram with very limited chances of survival,” she told about 50 reporters, cameramen and photographers.
“It’s an injustice because even if everything is done for the best, they don’t have the same resources as in our hospitals,” she added at the end of the one-hour visit to Lokmanya Tilak Hospital.
“I’m feeling very good about being here,” she told a press conference with the aid group later in the day.
“This visit has been in my diary for the last six months and we have been planning it for the last year. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” she said.
Trierweiler did not address the scandal directly during the news conference, but in response to a reporter’s question about how she feels about her future life, Trierweiler, said she was not sure what the years will bring.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I have time, there are some years to come. I will see bit by bit. For now I am not foreseeing anything. In any case, don’t worry about me.”
In other developments, Paris police yesterday said 19 officers were injured and about 250 people detained after a protest on Sunday against Hollande’s leadership degenerated into violence.
Additional reporting by AP
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