Turkey to take legal action against Hebdo
Erdoğan urges boycott of French products, says Macron needs ’mental treatment’
ALL legal and diplomatic steps will be taken, Turkey’s Communications Directorate said on Wednesday, as it blasted the French weekly magazine CharlieHebdo on Tuesday for publishing “loathsome so-called caricatures” purportedly of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
“Our people should have no doubt that all necessary legal and diplomatic steps will be taken against the caricature in question. Our battle against these rude, illintentioned and insulting actions will continue with reason but determination,” the directorate said.
Turkey’s Communications director Fahrettin Altun, writing on Twitter, added: “Charlie Hebdo just published a series of socalled cartoons full of despicable images purportedly of our President. We condemn this most disgusting effort by this publication to spread its cultural racism and hatred.
“The so-called caricatures are loathsome and they are devoid of any real sense of human decency. It’s clearly the product of a xenophobic, Islamophobic, and intolerant cultural environment the French leadership seems to want for their country.”
While underscoring Turkey’s position of being opposed to any violence and acts of terrorism against civilians, he said: “We will not remain silent in the face of disgusting attacks on our culture and religion no matter where it comes from.
“The racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic and antiSemitic incitements cannot provoke us into reciprocating in kind. We refuse to bow down to your intimidation and provocations based on your perceived victimhood.”
Condemning the satirical weekly, Turkey’s presidential spokesman İbrahim Kalın said attacking individual rights is not humour or freedom of speech.
“The aim of these publications, devoid of morality and decency, is to sow seeds of hatred and animosity,” he wrote on Twitter.
Ömer Çelik, the spokesman for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, also took to Twitter accusing the magazine of turning into a “hate production centre”.
Earlier this month, President Emmanuel Macron accused French Muslims of “separatism” and described Islam as “a religion in crisis all over the world”.
Tensions further escalated after Samuel Paty, a teacher at Bois-d’Aulne College in Conflans-SainteHonorine, was beheaded on October 16 by Abdullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old of Chechen origin, in retaliation for showing controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammed to his students during one of his classes on freedom of expression.
Macron paid tribute to Paty and said France would “not give up our cartoons”.
‘FREE SPEECH’
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called on Nato allies to stand shoulder- to- shoulder on values of tolerance and free speech, in a veiled rebuke to Turkey.
“The UK stands in solidarity with France and the French people in the wake of the appalling murder of Samuel Paty,” Raab said in a statement. “Terrorism can never and should never be justified.
“Nato allies and the wider international community must stand shoulder-toshoulder on the fundamental values of tolerance and free speech, and we should never give terrorists the gift of dividing us.”
Several Arab countries as well as Turkey, Iran and Pakistan have censured Macron’s attitude toward Muslims and Islam, with President Erdoğan saying the French leader needs “mental treatment”.
While calls to boycott French products are circulating online in many countries, Erdoğan has urged Turks “to never help French brands or buy them”.