Premier Giuseppe Conte said in a tweet in French aimed at French President Emmanuel Macron Monday that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's questioning the French leader's mental health over his new policy against domestic Islamists in the wake of the beheading of a teacher who showed the Charlie Hebdo cartoons to his students was "unacceptable".
"The words levelled by President Erdogan at President Macron are unacceptable," said Conte after the Turkish strongman said Macron should check his mental health.
"Personal invective does not help the positive agenda that the EU wants to pursue with Turkey but, on the contrary, makes solutions harder.
"Full solidarity with President Emmanuel Macron".
Erdogan suggested Saturday that the French President needed "some sort of mental treatment" over his attitude towards Muslims in France.
"What is Macron's problem with Islam? What is his problem with Muslims?" Erdogan said, speaking at his Justice and Development Party meeting in Kayseri.
Erdogan added: "Macron needs some sort of mental treatment. What else is there to say about a head of state who doesn't believe in the freedom of religion and behaves this way against the millions of people of different faiths living in his own country?" Macron has vowed to crack down on radical Islamism in France after the country was shaken by the beheading of Samuel Paty on October 16.
Paty was a history professor who had taught a class on freedom of expression during which he used controversial caricatures of Islam's Prophet Mohammed from satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
The killing of the teacher by a suspected terrorist in a Paris suburb reignited tensions over secularism, Islamism and Islamophobia in France.
After Erdogan's statement, which Paris described as unacceptable, France recalled its ambassador to Ankara.
Erdogan and Macron have clashed repeatedly in the past, over Ankara's controversial activities in the eastern Mediterranean including the conflict in Libya and the situation in Cyprus.
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