EU Warned Turkey against Boycotting French Goods

Erdogan's call to boycott French goods violates the agreements concluded between Turkey and the EU and further alienates Ankara from Europe, the European Commission official said. The European Union condemned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s calls to his citizens to boycott French goods. Such a call runs counter to the commitments that Turkey has made; that will further distance it from the EU, an official representative of the European Commission said on Tuesday, October 27. He recalled that agreements between Brussels and Ankara provide for free trade. Erdogan called to boycotting goods after attacks against French President Emmanuel Macron, when the later stressed the importance of freedom of speech and opinion and said that France "will not abandon cartoons and drawings, as others do". The French president made this statement after an Islamist near Paris murdered the teacher Samuel Paty. Earlier Erdogan accused Macron of Islamophobia, calling him "sick" and advised " his mental state to be examined." In response, France recalled its ambassador from Ankara for consultations. German government and the European Commission harshly condemned Erdogan's statements about Macron. Samuel Paty, a history, geography and civil society teacher at the College Bois-d'Aulne secondary school in Conflans-Saint-Honorine, was killed and beheaded on October 16th. He was killed by a Moscow native,18-year-old Chechen who had refugee status, who had previously distributed threats to the teacher, including on social networks. A few days before his death, Paty showed his disciples cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from Charlie Hebdo magazine as an example of freedom of opinion. In addition to Turkey, the governments of Muslim countries such as Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, Kuwait and Pakistan have criticized Macron's statements in defense of freedom of opinion and criticized Islam.