The French public is divided following a robbery turned deadly on the morning of Wednesday September 11th in the southern French city of Nice. Two armed men attacked 67-year-old jewelry shop owner Stéphane Turk as he was opening the metal shutters of his small shop. As the men attempted to flee on their scooter after the robbery, Mr. Turk fired multiple shots, killing 19 year-old Anthony Asli. The young man was well known by local police, arrested over a dozen times for theft during his short life and back on the streets only two months after his last spell in prison.
On Friday of last week, the Nice State Prosecutor, Eric Bedos, announced to the press that Mr. Turk would be formally charged with voluntary homicide (equivalent to second-degree murder in the US). The prosecution rejected the hypothesis of self-defense, arguing that Mr. Turk demonstrated his intention to kill the robber by firing on him as he fled the scene of the crime. In order to claim legitimate self-defense under French law, the actions taken against the assailant must be proportional to the immediate danger in which the victim finds him or herself. In a climate of rising criminality and the upcoming municipal and European parliamentary elections, the incident has sparked outrage and entrepreneurial politicians have not been shy about throwing oil on the fire. The media has taken to referring to the story as the Bijoutier de Nice affair.
The divide runs along existing political cleavages in the country for the most part. On one side are many on the left defending the rule of law and procedural justice. They argue that the shopkeeper unjustly took justice into his own hands by shooting Anthony Asli in the back as he fled. Media attention has also quickly underlined the lamentable social conditions of the young man’s upbringing.
On the other side, millions to come to the shopkeeper’s defense. By last count, the largest Facebook support group counted over 1.6 million likes. Many of his sympathizers are business owners fed uo with rising criminality and the seeming impotence of the French police and judicial system. Christine Boquet, President of the Union of Jewelers and Watchmakers, told Nice Matin that the rising criminality in the country “creates enormous stress for the merchants. They live with this fear and insecurity every day.” Mr. Turk’s had already been robbed once in October 2012 in an eerily similar incident. It was after this robbery that he purchased the handgun implicated in the shooting.
This is not the first time an incident like this has divided the country. The owner of a scooter shop robbed over 50 times in the past year is currently under investigation for attempted murder after shooting an armed thief in an altercation. In December 2010, a truffle farmer shot a man stealing truffles. Defending his actions, the farmer told investigators that he had been startled by the man who had come onto his farm at night carrying a pick-axe like tool used for harvesting truffles. French police later charged him with second-degree murder.
In a country with relatively little violent crime, the intensity of the debate has surprised many. French are rightly outraged with the incidence of violent crime rising in many parts of the country and the police and judicial system (considered lax by many) seemingly unable to attack the problem. Mr. Valls, Minister of the Interior, was right when he said that there is no magic wand to solve the problem, but immediate action is needed nonetheless. Failure to attack the problem will no doubt lead to a drift in the French conception of self-defense towards the American model, which gives carte blanche to extrajudicial revenge.
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