Erdoğan embracing clash of civilisations - analyst

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would “welcome” a clash of civilisations, columnist Andreas Kluth wrote for Bloomberg on Saturday.

Erdoğan has, Kluth said, “once again picked a fight with Europe, and specifically France,” claiming France was “constitutionally Islamophobic.”

Similar to last year’s “brain death” comments, Erdoğan has recently said French President Emmanuel Macron was in need of a mental treatment, while calling for a boycott of French goods over Macron’s decision to display cartoons insulting Prophet Muhammad.

The cartoons in question were cited as the reason behind the targeting of satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, in the aftermath of the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty earlier this month.

As Erdoğan pretends to “speak on behalf of an entire faith,” he is indeed “picking this fight only to distract Turks from his failure to govern,” Kluth said.

According to the columnist, Macron was both right to defend freedom of speech, and justified in clamping down on extremism, but wrong in asserting that Islam was in crisis. Yet, “the worst that can be said about Macron is that he’s tone deaf,” he said. “By contrast, Erdogan is cynical in a more malevolent way.”

Feeling spurned by European leaders, Erdoğan turned irredentist and belligerent, stamping out civil liberties in Turkey, and mismanaging the economy. “To distract Turks from these failures, he tries to claim the mantle of former Ottoman and Islamic grandeur,” Kluth said.

Erdoğan’s involvement with regional conflicts such as Libya and Syria aims to project power, and as the president posits himself as the new Sultan, a bid that pits him against France in more than one occasion, the columnist said.

As the president portrays Europe as the enemy, he might “unleash passions and hatreds far beyond his, or anybody’s control,” he said, urging “Europeans and Turks of any faith” to tactically ignore Erdoğan to avoid further suffering “and perhaps war.”