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French President Emmanuel Macron stands in front of the coffin of slain teacher Samuel Paty inside Sorbonne University’s courtyard in Paris on October 21, 2020.
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The French government said on Sunday it would recall the country’s ambassador in Ankara, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan insulted French President Emmanuel Macron in a series of speeches, notably suggesting he needed “treatment on a mental level.”
- The latest Erdoğan attacks come after several months of rising tensions between the two countries, notably after France sent ships in the Mediterranean to oppose Turkey’s claims on natural gas reserves off Cyprus.
- Macron has repeatedly criticized Turkey’s role in NATO, and the two countries have taken opposite stances on regional wars in Syria and Libya, and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
- The Turkish president’s latest attack was ostensibly over the policy Macron recently unveiled to fight the influence of “radical Islam,” and his warning, after a teacher was decapitated in the street on October 16, that France would never “give up on cartoons” and the freedom to publish them.
The outlook: Macron’s stance on the freedom to criticize and caricature religions, including Islam, is also creating an uproar in many Muslim countries. The French president may soon need more support on this — and on his confrontation with Turkey — from the rest of his European partners, who have remained mostly silent for now.
Meanwhile, France’s interests in the Middle East may suffer if the protests don’t subside. That is, however, a risk that the French president seems ready to take.
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