Macron's Rhetoric Against Turkey Has Reached Its Limit
His words aren't hurting Erdogan, and he doesn't have the support needed to deploy sticks and stones.
No slouch at sharp rhetoric himself.
Photographer: Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images
For Emmanuel Macron, the moment of truth is approaching at a rate of knots. The French president has again fired off rhetorical broadsides at his Turkish counterpart over the crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean. But words are not going to break Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bones, and Macron will struggle to build an international consensus to use the economic sticks, much less the military stones to force a Turkish retreat.
The French leader’s verbal volleys have already lost a certain je ne sais quoi from repetition. At Thursday’s gathering in Corsica of the leaders of the so-called MED7 — France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and Malta — Macron called for European countries to establish “red lines” for Turkish provocations.