Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared Saturday that Macron needs “mental treatment” over his view of Islam. France promptly recalled its ambassador in Ankara for consultations to protest the ‘’insults.’’.
France’s umbrella representative group of Jewish institutions, Crif, slammed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comments attacking French President Emmanuel Macron, charging that the Turkish leader saw himself as the “new caliph of the Muslim world.”
In a statement, Francis Kalifat, president of Crif, urged France to take a firm line on Erdogan, whom he called “the tyrant of Ankara.”
France, Francis Kalifat said, “must not become the new arena for Erdogan’s follies.”
‘’We must immediately stop the delirium of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who sees himself more and more as the new Caliph of the Muslim world,’’ Kalifat said.
He continued, ‘’For years, the Tyrant of Ankara has pursued an aggressive and expansionist policy made of threats, intimidation, invectives and insults unworthy of a head of state, sparking an outpouring of threats and hatred against France and its President.’’
‘’By attacking the President of the Republic, it is France that we are attacking and it is France, united in all its components, which must stand by his side,’’ he added.
He continued: ”The Turkish President has shown his muscles in Syria against the Kurds, supplied Syrian arms and fighters to the Libyan government of national unity led by Fayez al-Sarraj, supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, opened a new front in northern Iraq, threatened Greece and Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean by violating their territorial waters, and was directly involved in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
Erdogan’s comments came amid a row with French President Emmanuel Macron on the topic of Islamism, with Erdogan asserting that Macron was suffering from “mental health” problems.
Erdogan declared Saturday that Macron needs “mental treatment” over his view of Islam. France promptly recalled its ambassador in Ankara for consultations to protest the ‘’insults.’’.
The French leader had earlier accused radical Islamists of fomenting “separatism” in France, pointing to the decapitation by a Muslim refugee earlier this month of Samuel Paty, a 41-year old school teacher who showed his class controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a course on free speech. France also has decided to shut down a mosque and dissolve Islamist organisations in the country.
‘’The rising Islamophobia in the West has turned into a wholesale attack on our book, our prophet and everything we consider holy,” Erdogan said in a speecj. “Relocations, inquisitions and genocides towards members of different religions is not a practice that is foreign to Europe. The crimes against humanity committed against Jews 80 years ago, the acts against our Bosnian siblings in Srebrenica just 25 years ago are still in the memory,” he added.
EU officials also reacted to Erdogan’s attacks against Macron.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell tweeted, in French, that Erdogan’s words are “unacceptable. I call on Turkey to stop this dangerous spiral of confrontation.”
Borrell declared that EU leaders, at a summit earlier this month, had made Turkey “a real offer to relaunch our relationship.” But, he warned, “political will from the Turkish authorities is needed on this positive agenda. Otherwise, Turkey will be even more isolated.”
Tensions between the EU and Turkey have risen in recent months, particularly over maritime disputes in the Eastern Mediterranean, which pit EU members Greece and Cyprus against Turkey. France has taken a particularly hard line against Turkey on those disputes and a range of other issues, including the wars in Syria and Libya, and more recently the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.