Main opposition CHP reacts against Macron over insults toward Turkish presidency

ANKARA

Turkey’s main opposition party has condemned French President Emmanuel Macron for his insults against the office of the Turkish presidency, in a rare support to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“The whole world should know that no president of any country cannot talk about the President of the Republic of Turkey in an improper way. They have no right to intervene in our domestic politics,” Engin Özkoç, deputy parliamentary leader of the CHP, told reporters at a press conference on Sept. 11.

“We don’t approve the statements of Macron. We condemn. He has to know his place,” he stated.

Macron, at a press conference on the occasion of the MED7 summit in Corsica, said, “We must be tough with the Turkish government and not with the Turkish people, who deserve more than the Erdoğan government.”

Bülent Kuşoğlu, deputy leader of the CHP, has also lashed out at Macron over the remarks he described as catering to French internal politics.

“[The eastern Meditarrenaean] is our national cause. The foreign policy is a national issue for us. Internally we separate Erdoğan and problems, but we don’t do it when it comes to foreign policy. We are lending support to the government on this issue,” he said.

France under Macron’s leadership has an assertive policy at NATO and other venues, Kuşoğlu said. “The enmity it shows against Turkey by supporting Greece on the eastern Mediterranean is another example of this policy. But it is impossible for him to succeed.”