Erdogan and the French

By Marc Champion

Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy during a bilateral meeting in Ankara, Turkey, on Feb. 25, 2011.

Don’t mention the French to Turkey’s outspoken prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

On Wednesday, Mr. Erdogan was taking questions from the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly in Strasbourg when an unsuspecting French MP asked him a question about how he would guarantee freedoms for religious minorities in Turkey.

“I believe this friend is French? She is also “French” to Turkey,” said Mr. Erdogan, using a blunt Turkish saying that means: You don’t know what you’re talking about.

France-bashing plays well in Turkey nowadays and Mr. Erdogan is in the midst of a re-election campaign. Many Turks have taken deep offense to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s active opposition to Turkey’s bid to join the European Union. And France’s recent decision to ban women from wearing the Burqa has played loudly and badly in Turkish media.

Meanwhile, Mr. Sarkozy’s decision to exclude Turkey from the gathering in Paris that launched a no-fly zone over Libya last month infuriated Mr. Erdogan and other Turkish leaders, who see France as a spent colonial power and Turkey as the Middle East’s new playmaker.

“Our attitude is not a bandit’s facing booty, like some,” Mr. Erdogan said, in a veiled reference to the leading role France took in imposing the Libyan no-fly zone, according to Turkey’s NTV television. Mr. Erdogan has repeatedly implied that France and other coalition members intervened in Libya because they want its oil.

Mr. Erdogan also told questioners to look to themselves before criticizing Turkey over human rights issues, and that Turkey’s electoral process wasn’t their business. What he didn’t talk about at all was Turkey’s EU bid, no longer a vote-winner among Turks.

Turkey’s NTV television quickly dubbed the performance another “One Minute!” moment, a reference to the moment at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, when Mr. Erdogan stormed off the stage after demanding more time to talk and telling Israel’s President Shimon Peres: “You know how to kill well.”

Many analysts now see Mr. Erdogan’s performance in Davos as the moment when he changed his country’s policy towards Israel, formerly a close military ally.

via Erdogan and the French – Emerging Europe Real Time – WSJ.