Erdogan: 'Charlie Hebdo' guilty of provoking Muslims, inciting to racial hatred
The first edition of Charlie Hebdo since the killing of 12 of its staff members at its central Paris offices last week aroused anger across the Muslim world.
By JPOST.COM STAFFTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan(photo credit: REUTERS)
Turkey’s firebrand president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, continues to make waves with his public comments in the wake of the Paris terrorist atrocities last week.Erdogan was quoted by the AFP news agency as telling a group of businessmen in Ankara that Charlie Hebdo, the satirical weekly newspaper whose cartoonists and writers were targeted by jihadist gunmen for lampooning Islam and the Prophet Mohammed, was guilty of “wreaking terror by intervening in the freedom space of others.”The first edition of Charlie Hebdo since the killing of 12 of its staff members at its central Paris offices last week aroused anger across the Muslim world, since it depicts the Prophet Mohammed shedding a tear while holding a sign that reads, “Je suis Charlie.”Caricatured representations of the Muslim prophet are considered blasphemous by Islamic clerical authorities."This magazine (is) notorious for its provocative publications about Muslims, about Christians, about everyone," Erdogan is reported to have said.The Turkish leader said that Charlie Hebdo abused its freedom of expression in order to insult an entire religious group."This is not called freedom,” Erdogan is quoted as saying by AFP. “This equates to wreaking terror by intervening in the freedom space of others. We should be aware of this. There is no limitless freedom.""They may be atheists,” Erdogan said of the Charlie Hebdo journalists. “If they are, they will respect what is sacred to me. If they do not, it means provocation which is punishable by laws. What they do is to incite hatred, racism."
