Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday launched another verbal attack on Emmanuel Macron, declaring that the French leader needs “mental treatment†over his policy toward Islam and Muslims, news agency AFP reported.
Erdoğan has repeatedly taken aim at Macron in recent months. Turkey and France are at loggerheads over a range of issues, including a dispute over territorial waters between Ankara and Athens, the conflict in Libya and Azerbaijan’s Armenian separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“What’s the problem of the individual called Macron with Islam and with the Muslims? Macron needs mental treatment,†Erdogan said in apparent reference to the French president’s recent vow to fight radical Islamism.
At the start of this month, Macron gave a landmark speech on his strategy to counter what he described as the ways radical Islam has infiltrated French society. Some commentators said the speech reflected a nuanced approach but others portrayed it as offensive to Muslims.
Macron renewed his pledge to crack down on radical Islamism after an attacker last week beheaded a teacher who had shown cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed in a class on freedom of speech in a school near Paris.
