History is full of intended and unintended protocol incidents that have turned into "diplomatic incidents," and sometimes into a pretext for war.
The "chair scandal", during the visit of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to Ankara, accompanied by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, provided an opportunity to recall some of these incidents that occur between diplomats and are either remembered or melted into oblivion.
The French magazine Le Point said that most people do not know that much blood was shed for the sake of the protocol ranks, and it enumerated some known incidents in history, indicating that the chair crisis in Turkey, although not without arrogance, was at least more civilized than customs that time.
In a report by Emmanuel Beretta, the magazine explained that all monarchs, and even popes, saw themselves as important and demanded to show signs of loyalty, before Europe adopted an increasingly accurate protocol that regulated customs among high-profile personalities, kings, princes, papal affairs, ambassadors and ministers, thus avoiding unnecessary friction in Diplomatic life.
In the modern world, the 1961 Vienna Convention, completed in 1963, codified the protocol traditions, although there are still many pitfalls, says Le Point.
When precedence turns into quarrels
The writer regained the incident of the companions of the Spanish ambassador, Baron Watville, in 1661, against the precedence of the French ambassador Count Godfroy Distrad, with the distinction of being the first to follow the King of England's carriage, and as a result the mercenaries attacked by Spain the ambassador's carriages and killed 8 French and wounded others, which made the king of France Louis XIV demands immediate compensation for the damage, and gets an apology from Spain the following year during a ceremony at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
However, the major incident that marked European history - as the writer says - when a group of Protestant nobles, angry that the Catholic Habsburg emperors prevented them from practicing Protestant religious rites in Bohemia, threw two emperor's governors from the window, with their clerk in May 1618 , In an incident that caused the terrible Thirty Years' War, which ended only with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
Unpaid debts in Algeria
At other times - as the writer says - the incident is just a pretext to implement the policy of expansion, such as the famous "Menasha Strike" that the Day of Algeria directed on April 30, 1827, to the French consul Deval.
The cause of the accident was that during the revolution, France borrowed wheat from two Jewish merchants in Algiers, Bakri and Bosnach, while the Jews in turn were indebted to Dai Hussein and were waiting for what France would pay them to pay them in order to pay off their debt, but Paris did not do anything. And the consul understood behind his back.
On April 29, 1827, the last day of the month of Ramadan, the Dai Hussain hosted a reception for all foreign consuls, attended by Deval, who was persona non grata, and an argument took place in Turkish about unpaid debts. Flies, but the consul exaggerated the matter in his report to the French authorities, and left Algeria, which led to the severing of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Although the Dai made it clear that he did not target France, but attacked exclusively Deval, whom he considered an impostor and liar, the King of France, Charles X, held on to the case, and a final warning was sent to the Dai asking him to make an apology and raise the French flag on his palace, and to fire 100 artillery rounds And abandon the claims of Jewish merchants, and began the blockade of Algiers, 3 years before the invasion of the country that resulted in 132 years of colonialism ended with much blood and tears.
Bismarck and the EMS telegram
Likewise, the publication of a royal letter in July 1870 led to the first of 3 wars between France and Prussia or what would become Germany later, and that message constituted a diplomatic crisis that was used by the Prussian advisor Bismarck to start the war, as King William of Prussia was the first to deal with In the city of Ems, the chancellor convinced Bismarck to abandon the idea of installing Prince Leopold on the throne of Spain, because France saw this as dangerous.
The French ambassador Benedetti visited the city of Ems and met with William the First, and sent a telegram to inform Bismarck of the content of the interview, so he wrote a telegram on the subject, but from a perspective offensive to France as well as to Prussia, and the message was distributed in the streets of Berlin on the same evening, so the anger was everywhere, where the council met The ministers in Paris urgently summoned the reservists, while William I signed a mobilization decree, and France formally declared war on Prussia.
Order of protocol
After World War II - as the writer says - relations finally calmed down between European countries, and the gradual construction of political Europe put an end to the diplomatic incidents that sparked wars, but the protocol remained a mystery, as how are places in public celebrations distributed between European countries of equal rank?
In principle, the criterion of seniority was considered "neutral" to avoid comparing countries according to their power or economic wealth, giving the person who ruled for the longest period the right to advance, and so the first place in the nave during the funeral of Charles de Gaulle in 1970 went to the emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. Who rules since 1930.
The European Union has implemented the rotating presidency system, so everything became clear, with the representative of the country holding the presidency at the right of the President of the European Council to avoid the leaders themselves being always in the front or always behind.
However, the Union, which is a recent and complex institution, has not fully established its practices, as there is a conflict in some tasks, such as speaking on behalf of the Union, and “therefore there is institutional tension that exists and overrides people,” especially when the head of the council who holds the rank of head of state and the head of the commission travels Whoever holds the rank of prime minister together, so the protocol precedence places the head of state before the prime minister.