France is increasing security at religious sites as the interior minister said Tuesday that the country faces a “very high” risk of terrorist threats, amid growing geopolitical tensions following the beheading of a history teacher Samuel Paty who showed his class caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
France is trying to quell anger in the Arab world amid anti-France protests and calls for boycotts of French goods in response to President Emmanuel Macron’s firm stance against Islamism in the wake of the Oct. 16 beheading. European allies have supported Macron, while Muslim-majority countries are angered by his defense of prophet cartoons they consider sacrilegious.
France’s national police have called for increased security at religious sites around the All Saint’s holiday this coming weekend, particularly noting online threats from extremists against Christians and moderate French Muslims.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on France-Inter radio that the terrorist threat remains “very high, because we have a lot of enemies from within and outside the country.”
He reiterated plans to try to disband Muslim groups seen as peddling dangerous radical views or with too much foreign financing. He accused Turkey and Pakistan in particular of “meddling in France’s internal business.”
“There is a battle against an Islamist ideology. We must not back down,” he said. But he insisted that “the Muslim faith has all its place in the republic.”
Some members of France’s largely moderate Muslim community are calling for calm, and defending the freedom of expression that the beheaded teacher was seeking to demonstrate.
The prophet cartoons deeply upset many Muslims around the world. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has led the charge against France, questioning Macron’s mental state, and France recalled its ambassador to Turkey for consultations, a first in French-Turkish diplomatic relations.
Tensions between the two countries have mounted in recent months over Turkish actions in Syria, Libya and the Caucasus Mountains region of Nagorno-Karabakh. But this new spat has quickly spread to other countries in Europe and the Muslim world.
Anti-France protests have been held from Bangladesh to the Gaza Strip, Kuwaiti stores pulled French yogurt and bottles of sparkling water from their shelves, Qatar University canceled a French culture week, and Pakistan’s parliament passed a resolution condemning the publication of cartoons of the prophet.
“Calls for boycott of products of any member state are contrary to the spirit of these obligations and will take Turkey even further away from the European Union,” a spokesman said.
Accession talks
Turkey applied to join the then European Economic Community in 1987 and began formal accession negotiations to the European Union in 2005, but the talks are seen as effectively frozen.
Protests erupted in several mainly-Muslim countries after President Emmanuel Macron defended a cartoonist’s right to caricature religious leaders in the wake of a French teacher’s murder.
Turkey has condemned the murder, but Mr. Erdogan has also resumed his long-standing and intense war of words with Mr. Macron, and has added his voice to calls for a boycott of French goods.
This is turn has been criticised by several European leaders, exacerbating the tensions surrounding Turkey’s bid to drill for gas in waters claimed by EU members Greece and Cyprus.
Now, the European Commission, which oversees the EU application process, has warned that an official boycott would breach the terms of Turkey’s relationship with the bloc.
“EU agreements with Turkey foresee free trade of goods,” the spokesman said.
“The bilateral obligations that Turkey has committed to under these agreements, as expressed in the Association Agreement, the Customs Union and the agricultural and coal and steel FTAs, should be fully respected.”
EU officials warn that Turkey’s stance could further damage its relations with key trading partners and its long-stalled efforts to join the EU.
“A boycott will only move Turkey even further away from the EU,” European Commission spokesman Balazs Ujvaris said Tuesday, insisting that Turkey needs to respect the terms of its trade deal on merchandise and goods with the EU.
