France temporarily withdraws ambassador from Turkey

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Turkish President Erdoğan (left) on French counterpart Macron: "Needs treatment on a mental level"

Photo: LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP

Relations between France and Turkey seem to have hit a new low.

If the countries recently clashed over the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the war in Libya and the gas dispute in the eastern Mediterranean, statements after the Islamist terrorist attack north of Paris are now apparently leading to escalation: France wants its ambassador temporarily from the Turkish capital Ankara pull it off.

President Emmanuel Macron justified the move with verbal attacks by his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

He said on Saturday in front of supporters of his party with reference to France's announced measures against Islamism: "What is the problem that this person by the name of Macron has with Muslims and Islam?"

Macron needed "treatment on a mental level," said Erdoğan.

"President Erdoğan's statements are unacceptable," a representative of the French presidency told the AFP news agency.

"Excessiveness and rudeness are not a method."

Macron had announced in early October that he would fight "Islamist separatism" that threatened to take control of some Muslim communities in France.

A few days later, history teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded in the street by an 18-year-old jihadist.

The attacker was shot dead by the police shortly afterwards.

Criticism of raid in Berlin mosque

According to the investigation, the teacher was killed for using cartoons of Mohammed in a class on the right to freedom of expression in front of 13-year-old students.

Many Muslims consider a pictorial representation of the prophet to be blasphemy.

Erdoğan did not only criticize the measures taken by the French authorities.

The president described the raid in a Berlin mosque on suspicion of Corona aid fraud as racist and Islamophobic.

"I strongly condemn the police operation carried out during the morning prayer in the (...) mosque in Berlin, which completely disregards freedom of belief and which is clearly nourished by racism and Islamophobia, which every day brings Europe closer to the darkness of the Middle Ages moves, "wrote Erdogan on Twitter the evening before.

On Wednesday about 150 police officers searched several companies and a mosque in the German capital on suspicion of corona subsidy fraud.

They confiscated 7,000 euros in cash, data media, computers and files.

According to the authorities, the raid involved three suspects who had applied for grants of over 70,000 euros, of which 45,000 euros were paid.

Part of the money is said to have ended up in the mosque's account.

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