French army chief asks soldiers to resign

PARIS (Yenisafak): French Army Chief Gen. Francois Lecointre has asked soldiers who had signed an anonymous letter recently warning of a civil war to resign from the service to manifest their ideas without compromising the neutrality of the army.

In a letter addressed to the officers, non-commissioned officers, soldiers, sailors, airmen, active and reserve he expressed concern at the servicemen getting engaged in the political debates.

He added that “in the name of the defense of personal convictions” the army was drawn into “political debates in which it has neither legitimacy nor vocation to intervene” and there were attempts to “instrumentalize and destabilize the military institution”.

“The most reasonable is certainly to leave the institution to be able to make their ideas and convictions public with complete freedom,” he said in the letter.

Lecointre urged armed forces members to demonstrate “unsurpassable virtues, cohesion and esprit de corps” to defeat the adversaries or the enemies of France.

Three weeks after retired military generals signed an open letter apprehended civil war-like conditions, a second letter allegedly drafted by active military members emerged in the press, accusing the government of making concessions to “Islamism.”

The authors of the second letter also accused the authorities in the armed forces of being “cowardly, deceitful and perverse”.

Both the letters published in right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles have been interpreted as a call for “‘putsch” and “sedition” by the political class, particularly after far-right opposition leader Marine Le Pen endorsed the initiative.

The political storm led Defense Minister Florence Parly to warn against the militarization of the armed forces and reminded about maintaining “neutrality and loyalty.”

Following the first letter, the army initiated disciplinary action against 18 active personnel and retired generals, many of whom hold ranks in reserve. The army is in process of identifying more active service members who are signatories to the letters.