NEITHER President François Hollande’s swaggering asseveration from Bamako last week that the French army has conclusively won its war against the forces of evil in Mali, nor a frightening forecast by experts about higher taxes next year despite promises to the contrary by the Socialist government is the talk of every French town these days; it is Stephan Turk.

Until only two weeks ago, Turk was an unknown jeweller among many others in the French Riviera town of Nice. Then, on September 11, two gun-wielding, hooded young men barged into his shop, hit him a number of times and shattered the glass cases to grab whatever loot they could in hurry. As they turned back to leave, Turk, a 67-year-old Lebanese immigrant, came to from the shock, took out his own gun and fired thrice.

One of the robbers fell dead. The other jumped on his scooter and drove off. Turk was arrested on voluntary homicide charge. The jeweller explained his firing was intended at incapacitating the scooter and that the death of the 19-year-old Anthony Asli was an accident.

Following a night of preliminary interrogation Stephan Turk was placed under house arrest with an electronic belt attached to his ankle to survey his movements. But the real surprise came during the day when,way beyond his expectations, more than a thousand people led by Christian Estrosi, the Mayor of Nice in person, demonstrated in his favour in front of the Palace of Justice and gave a standing ovation to his son, Yan Turk.

The avalanche of sympathy for the jeweller rolled on a country-wide scale when 1.6 million people signed in on social networks, a staggering figure from any point of view. Interior Minister Manuel Valls flew in emergency to Nice to make its inhabitants feel he was on their side: “I understand the exasperation and anger of the shopkeepers. Those who rob must know they will be pursued relentlessly.”

More reactions followed. President Hollande interrupted a live TV interview to say he identified with the anger and frustration of the jeweller, but that justice should be allowed to follow its course.

The National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was more forthright: “Were I in Turk’s situation, I’d have done the same. It’s a pity that the other scoundrel got away!” Not to be left behind, Jean-François Copé, the conservative hopeful for the 2017 presidential election, said he understood President Hollande’s concern over letting justice take its course but that he had no sympathy for the hoodlum who died.

All this comes at a moment when France is witnessing a spate of high-profile jewellery thefts in major cities. Three months ago, in two armed robberies on consecutive days, gunmen in the other famous French Riviera town of Cannes made off with caches worth 140 million euros. As recently as on September 9 in Place Vendôme, the legendary Parisian landmark internationally famous for its jewellery stores, an armed gang rammed a powerful SUV through a glass door and absconded with valuables worth two million euros.

“The rate of jewellery hauls is one per day in this country,” says Christine Boquet, the head of the Union of Jewellers & Watchmakers: “This has created an enormous stress on us professionals who have to submit to an everyday feeling of fear and insecurity.”

Stephan Turk was interviewed by France’s most popular radio, Europe 1. He said he felt sorry for the young man who was also implicated in no less than 14 criminal affairs, as his record later revealed: “All this is his father’s fault. Had he brought up his son correctly, it would never have happened.”

The nation-wide furore over the Turk affair is growing. As the jeweller from Nice has turned into a national hero, no one seems to be bothered about the technical detail of whether he was really under threat when he fired the shots. The prosecution holds that as they were preparing to leave the shop, the robbers had already turned their backs on him and that he deliberately raised his gun and killed one of them in cold blood. The defence lawyer says there is no such thing as ‘cold blood’ when you are beaten up, humiliated and robbed of the entire savings of your lifetime.

The daily Le Figaro which devoted a full page of an issue last week to cover the Turk affair, gave the details of a number of major legal trials in recent years in which judges unanimously decided to drop murder charges against men who, in at least three different and unrelated cases, had fatally shot their aggressors after being targets of harassment, physical violence and threats for hours.

The writer is a journalist based in Paris.

ZafMasud@gmail.com