Erdogan accused of incitement in France
Turkish president’s provocative remarks contributed to climate of hatred, say experts
TURKEY’S president was last night accused of fanning the flames of Islami st violence against France, which mourned its second beheading in two weeks in an attack on a church in Nice that left three dead.
A 21-year- old assailant of Tunisian origin attacked a churchgoer at NotreDame Basilica, decapitating her before slitting the throat of a warden and stabbing a second woman to death.
The suspect, Brahim Aoussaoui, 21, told police he arrived in France this month from Lampedusa, where he was quarantined before being released with an order to quit Italian territory.
“France is very clearly under attack,” declared Emmanuel Macron, citing a stabbing at the French consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in which a guard was injured. In Avignon, an armed man was shot dead by police after he refused to drop his weapon. In Lyon a knife-wielding Afghan suspect was arrested near a railway station and in Sartrouville, north of Paris, a man was seized with a blade near a church after telling his father he planned “to do as in Nice”.
The attacks prompted France to raise its terror alert to maximum and double the soldiers on its streets to 7,000.
A defiant Mr Macron said France would not alter its values. “I say it with great clarity again today,” he said. “We will not give any ground.”
The French president has been involved in a freedom of expression feud with Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey in the wake of the beheading of a teacher who showed his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Mr Erdogan said this week that Muslims were subject to a “lynch campaign” comparable to the persecution of the Jews in the Second World War. Fethis Benslama, a radicalisation expert in France, said: “Erdogan really has fanned this hatred – these people know full well when they use such phrases where they will lead.” European leaders last night also condemned the attack.
“President Erdogan’s rhetoric … this week was deeply inappropriate. Words have consequences,” said Belgian MEP Hilde Vautmans.
THE Turkish president’s inflammatory remarks over France’s liberal attitude towards the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed fanned the flames for this week’s deadly terror attack in Nice, experts and European politicians said yesterday.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan this week said that Muslims were subject to a “lynch campaign” in Europe, where nations no longer felt the need to “hide their hatred of Islam”.
Earlier this month, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, ordered a crackdown on Islamists following the beheading of Samuel Paty, a teacher who showed his class caricatures of the prophet, something many Muslims consider blasphemous and offensive.
Mr Erdoğan said Mr Macron needed “mental checks”. “What is Macron’s problem with Islam? What is his problem with Muslims?” he said. Experts believe the rhetoric contributed to the climate of anger that led to the attack in Nice, alongside a stabbing at the French consulate in Saudi Arabia, and an incident in Avignon where police killed a man brandishing a gun.
Anger at the cartoons was being “accentuated by some of the hypocritical calls by various Muslim leaders” including Mr Erdoğan, said Raffaello Pantucci, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. Hilde Vautmans, a Belgian liberal MEP who is shadow rapporteur for Turkey on the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said: “President Erdoğan’s rhetoric towards Emmanuel Macron this week was deeply inappropriate. Words have consequences. We urge him to refrain from his provocations, which are endangering relations between EU countries and Ankara.”
In Brussels, the presidents of the European Council and Commission offered their support to Mr Macron. “Freedom of expression is a fundamental value underpinning our democracy,” said Charles Michel, the council president.
On Wednesday, the day before the attacks, jihadist social media channels began sharing a propaganda video “to capitalise on the teacher’s beheading and encourage similar attacks”, said Laith Alkhouri, a private sector counter-terrorism adviser.
“The attacks are part of a long, ongoing confrontation between France and the jihadists,” Mr Alkhouri said.
“Jihadists see France as an enemy against Muslims in and out of the country – whether for banning the niqab or as part of the global coalition [against Islamic State].” Jihadist social media users celebrated yesterday’s attacks, in one instance sharing an image of a beheading with captions in English and Arabic reading “Slit their throats”.
Turkey condemned the attack, with its foreign ministry expressing “solidarity with French people”.
But Ankara’s condolences may not placate those who have already called for sanctions on Turkey after Mr Erdoğan called for his fellow countrymen to boycott French products.