, Columnist
Erdogan’s Assault on Macron Is the Height of Cynicism
Turkey’s president isn’t speaking for Muslims. He just wants to distract from his own failure.
Picking a fight.
Photographer: Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images
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Almost three decades after the late Samuel Huntington hypothesized a coming “clash of civilizations,” there are those who — for their own cynical purposes — would actually welcome exactly that. Among them is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
This month, he has once again picked a fight with Europe, and specifically France. The country is constitutionally Islamophobic, he claims. President Emmanuel Macron should get a mental-health checkup, he has said repeatedly. And Muslims everywhere should boycott French goods, Erdogan has urged, pretending to speak on behalf of an entire faith.