Erdogan accused Macron of having a “problem” with Islam and with Muslims (File)
Istanbul:
Turkey on Sunday said it had offered condolences to France over the gruesome killing of teacher Samuel Paty after Paris disputed the claim.
On Saturday, France said it was recalling its envoy to Turkey for consultations after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron needed his mental health checked.
Erdogan accused Macron of having a “problem” with Islam and with Muslims for defending the right to show cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed — an act for which the French schoolteacher was murdered last week.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Sunday accused Turkey of “trying to whip up hatred” against France and reiterated Paris’s disappointment that Turkey had not issued a condemnation of the teacher’s murder.
“Turkey, a country fighting for years against any kind of terror and violence, has been saddened by the murder of Samuel Paty,” the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.
Turkey’s saddness over the killing was conveyed its top-level representative in France — Ambassador to Paris Ismail Hakki Musa, it added.
“Horrified by this atrocious murder of a teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. Nothing justifies it. My condolences to his loved ones,” the Turkish ambassador tweeted in French on October 17.
Paty was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen for showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed during a class on freedom of speech.
“Turkey’s sensitivity on terror does not discriminate any language, religion, race or thought,” the Turkish foreign ministry said, criticising French silence on the killing of Turkish teachers by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
France and Turkey are at loggerheads over a range of issues including maritime rights in the eastern Mediterranean, Libya, Syria and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Erdogan on Sunday accused Macron of being obsessed with him and renewed his call that the French leader needed to have mental checks.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)