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The relationship between France and Turkey is deteriorating. In a dispute with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the Turks to boycott the French brands.
“From here I appeal to my people. Just don’t pay attention to French brands, don’t buy them,” Erdoğan said. With a view to the alleged Islamophobia in Europe, he made a comparison with National Socialism.
Muslims in Europe are exposed to a “lynching campaign” that is comparable to the persecution of “Jews before World War II,” Erdogan said. He accused the European heads of state and government of being “fascists in the true sense of the word” and “chains of National Socialism”. Europe must end the “Macron-controlled hate campaign” against Muslims.
After the beheading of a teacher in France, Macron made it clear that freedom of expression in France also includes the right to caricature the prophet Muhammad. France “would not give up cartoons and drawings” even if others did, Macron said at a memorial service honoring the slain Samuel Paty. He had shown cartoons of Muhammad in class and was assassinated and beheaded in the street. Islamic tradition forbids representing the Prophet Muhammad.
As a result, traders took French products from their branches in Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar on Sunday. Erdogan accused Macron of Islamophobia over the weekend and expressed doubts about his mental health. Paris called its ambassador from Ankara in protest.
Maas describes Erdogan’s verbal attacks as “completely unacceptable”
The current call for a boycott marks a new low point in relations between Paris and Ankara. More recently, the two countries had already clashed over the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the war in Libya and the gas dispute in the eastern Mediterranean.
Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) also described Erdogan’s verbal attacks on French head of state Macron as a “new low” in relations with Ankara. Erdogan’s personal attacks are “completely unacceptable,” Maas told a joint press conference with the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, in Berlin.
