Turkey raging as Charlie Hebdo cartoon shows Erdogan in underpants lifting up woman’s hijab amid Prophet Mohammed row
TURKEY has condemned a Charlie Hebdo cartoon showing its president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in underpants lifting up a woman’s hijab.
The image has fuelled the row between the two countries after French president Emmanuel Macron defended the right to show cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Macron was speaking in the wake of the murder of teacher Samuel Paty, by 18-year-old Abdullah Anzorov on October 17.
Paty was beheaded after using cartoons from French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to teach his students about the importance of free speech.
The 47-year-old teacher was posthumously given the Legion d'Honneur – France’s highest award – and Macron insisted the country would "not give up our cartoons".
Depictions of the Prophet Mohammed are offensive to Muslims and his words have led to a boycott of French goods in Islamic countries.
A Charlie Hebdo cartoon is now once again at the centre of a row involving the Islamic world, where there have been demonstrations after Macron's comments and public displays of the Prophet Mohammed cartoons.
On its cover it features Erdogan sitting in a white T-shirt and underpants, holding a canned drink as he lifts a woman's hijab to look at her naked body beneath.
The cartoon immediately drew sharp criticism from the Turkish officials.
“We strongly condemn the publication concerning our President in the French magazine which has no respect for any belief, sacredness and values,” presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin wrote on Twitter.
“They are just showing their own vulgarity and immorality. An attack on personal rights is not humour and freedom expression.”
Turkish presidential communications director Fahrettin Altun tweeted: “Macron’s anti-Muslim agenda is bearing fruit!
“We condemn this most disgusting effort by this publication to spread its cultural racism and hatred.”
Prosecutors in Turkey have also reportedly opened an investigation into Charlie Hebdo.
Prophet Mohammed cartoons have been displayed in France in solidarity with Paty to defend what many in the country see as its values of free speech and secularism.
Macron has said he would redouble efforts to stop conservative Islamic beliefs subverting French values – which has angered many Muslims.
President Erdogan led the personal attacks on Macron, with whom he has a fraught relationship, and also called for a boycott of French products.
"What is the problem of this person called Macron with Muslims and Islam? Macron needs treatment on a mental level," he said.
He then went on to compare the treatment of Muslims to the way Hitler and the Nazis treated Jewish people in the 1930s.
Muslims are "now subjected to a lynch campaign similar to that against Jews in Europe before World War II," claimed the Turkish leader.
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