Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday joined calls for a boycott of French goods, ramping up a standoff between France and Muslim countries over Islam and freedom of speech.
Erdogan has led the charge against French President Emmanuel Macron over his robust defense of the right to mock religion following the murder of French high-school teacher Samuel Paty, who had shown his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Erdogan added his voice to calls in the Arab world for citizens to spurn French goods.
“Never give credit to French-labeled goods, don’t buy them,” the president, who caused a furor at the weekend by declaring that Macron needed “mental checks,” said during a televised speech in Ankara.
After Turkey was accused by France of remaining silent over Paty’s killing on Oct. 16, Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin on Monday denounced the “monstrous murder,” adding that “nothing” could justify the attack.
French goods have already been pulled from supermarket shelves in Qatar and Kuwait, among other Gulf states, while in Syria, people have burned pictures of Macron, and French flags have been torched in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
France’s largest employers’ federation urged companies to “resist the blackmail” over the boycott calls.
The beheading of Paty by a Chechen extremist caused deep shock in France.
Paty had shown his pupils some of the Mohammed cartoons over which 12 people were massacred at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015.
Depictions of the Prophet Mohammed are seen as offensive by many Muslims, but in France such cartoons have become identified with a proud secular tradition dating back to the Revolution.
In the aftermath of Paty’s murder, Macron issued a passionate defense of free speech and France’s secular values, vowing that the nation “will not give up cartoons.”
As the backlash over France’s reaction widened, European leaders rallied behind Macron.
“They are defamatory comments that are completely unacceptable, particularly against the backdrop of the horrific murder of the French teacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist fanatic,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said.
“President Erdogan’s words addressing President @EmmanuelMacron are unacceptable,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte wrote on Twitter, adding that the Netherlands stood “for the freedom of speech and against extremism and radicalism.”
“Personal insults don’t help the positive agenda the EU wants to have with Turkey, but pushes solutions further away,” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte wrote on Twitter.
Erdogan — who has styled himself a defender of Muslims worldwide — compared the treatment of Muslims in Europe to that of Jews before World War II, saying they were the object of a “lynching campaign.”
“You are in a real sense fascists, you are in a real sense the links in the chain of Nazism,” he said.
“European leaders should tell the French president to stop his hate campaign” against Muslims, he added.
Several suspected Islamist radicals have been arrested in dozens of raids since Paty’s murder, and about 50 organizations with alleged links to such individuals have been earmarked for closure by the government.
Macron has also drawn fire in other Muslim-majority countries, including Pakistan and Morocco.
The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday summoned French Charge d’Affaires Florent Aydalot “in protest against the French authorities’ insistence on supporting the publication of cartoons insulting the Prophet, peace be upon him.”
“Any insult and disrespect toward the Prophet of Islam and Islamic values are strongly condemned,” a ministry statement said.
In Bangladesh, about 10,000 people from an Islamist group that advocates for the introduction of Islamic law in the Muslim-majority country yesterday marched through Dhaka to denounce the display of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in France, while the group’s leader urged Muslims around the world to boycott French products.
Additional reporting by AP
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