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French beauty products, cheese and yogurt can be difficult to sell for a while in Turkey. This is after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a boycott on Monday.
– In the same way that some in France say “don’t buy Turkish brands”, now I want to say to my nation: ignore French brands, don’t buy French brands, said the Turkish president in a speech in Ankara.
It may seem a bit strange, just ten days after the brutal murder of French history professor Samuel Paty.
But for Erdogan, this is much more than murder. He sees an opportunity to present himself as a champion of all Muslims when he now accuses France, with which it is on a collision course in Libya and the eastern Mediterranean for other reasons, of discriminating against Muslims.
In France, they have just recovered from the shock of a radical Islamist who stabs and beheads a history teacher in a Paris suburb, simply because he showed Muhammad cartoons in a class. Apparently the intention of the act was to scare other teachers into silence.
“We do not intend to stop drawing pictures and caricatures, even if others back down,” Macron said in an emotional speech at Samuel Paty’s coffin.
Macron has said that “Islam is today a religion in crisis throughout the world” and has justified the satire of Charlie Hebdo’s operation with the Prophet Muhammad on the basis of freedom of expression and the right to blaspheme.
The distinction between state and religion, which has been statutory in France since 1905, is a cornerstone of the republic. Some French debaters are now making comparisons between today’s Islamists and how the 19th century clergy in the Catholic Church tried to seize power over politics.
Several newspapers have republished cartoons and some French municipalities have shown them on buildings. All in the name of freedom and in protest against Paty’s murder.
But: it is also possible to see this in other ways.
In Muslim countries like Turkey, Pakistan, and Morocco, disrespectful images of the Prophet Muhammad arouse disgust. Satire can be a dangerous occupation there, and not only when it is directed at the Prophet.
In other countries, such as Algeria, however, memories also emerge of the derogatory French view of Islam and how Muslims were deprived of fundamental rights for a long time. This criticism, which emphasizes the colonial heritage, is also heard internally in France, where discrimination against people of Arab and African origin is a known problem in working life.
Than a mosque in paris It has now been closed because he shared a video on Facebook criticizing the teacher, that several large Muslim organizations are threatened with dissolution, even though the links to the murder are unclear, to say the least, and that the education of the Magnets abroad is severely hampered, which some critics regard as income. because France has never seriously viewed its Muslim citizens as equals.
The fact that the French interior minister said in an interview that he does not like to see “ethnic food” in grocery stores, with a clear reference to halal meat, further polarizes the atmosphere.
The great tragedy is that what Samuel Paty wanted to discuss with his students was precisely this: the importance of freedom of expression, but also the responsibility that comes with its use.
Read more:
Tone hardens after Macron’s remarks on Muslims
France calls home ambassador of Turkey
Macron in the coffin: “Samuel Paty remained facing the Republic on Friday”
