Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has expressed his full support and solidarity to Emmanuel Macron following the insults by Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan against the French President.
“Personal insults against President Macron and hate speech targeting France by the Turkish leadership is unacceptable, fuels religious hatred and undermines peaceful coexistence,” Mitsotakis tweeted in Greek and English on Sunday evening and later also in French.
Personal insults against President Macron and hate speech targeting France by the Turkish leadership is unacceptable, fuels religious hatred and undermines peaceful coexistence. Full support and solidarity to @EmmanuelMacron and the French people, still mourning a heinous crime.
— Prime Minister GR (@PrimeministerGR) October 25, 2020
Les insultes contre le Président Macron et contre la France, de la part des autorités turques, sont inacceptables. Elles incitent à la haine religieuse et sapent la coexistence pacifique. Plein soutien et solidarité à la France qui est encore sous l’effet d’un crime odieux.
— Prime Minister GR (@PrimeministerGR) October 25, 2020
Erdogan said on Saturday that President Macron needed “some sort of mental health treatment” over his attitude towards Muslims in France and made also other comments that the French government described as “unacceptably rude.”
“What is Macron’s problem with Islam? What is his problem with Muslims?” Erdogan said. He added “Macron needs some sort of mental treatment. What else is there to say about a head of state who doesn’t believe in the freedom of religion and behaves this way against the millions of people of different faiths living in his own country?”
Macron has vowed to crack down on radical Islamism in France after the country was shaken by the beheading of Samuel Paty on October 16. Paty was a history professor who had taught a class on freedom of expression during which he used controversial caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed from satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The killing of the teacher by a suspected terrorist in a Paris suburb reignited tensions over secularism, Islamism and Islamophobia in France.
“Excess and rudeness are not a method. We demand that Erdogan change the course of his policy because it is dangerous in every way. We do not enter into unnecessary polemics and do not accept insults,” a spokesperson at the Elysée Palace, home of the French presidency, told CNN.
France has immediately recalled its ambassador to Turkey.
Mr Macron has no problems with muslims nor islam! His problem is terrorists that kill innocent teatchers! Mr Erdogan is the one that should take a brake and a thought about what he is saying! Is there really a benefit in rasing hatred???? No!!!!! We can all live together if we only respect each other and with that I mean RESPECT. What is a drawing, just marks on a paper! No one knows how the Profet Muhammed looked like, ok?