The CHP leader brought forward his claim during his party’s parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday.
“French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked Erdoğan in an appropriate way not to bring his wife to France for an official visit due to her attire [headscarf]. We experienced this incident. Did we ever complain about it? The request hurt us. It disturbed us. But we did not turn it into a political debate,” Baykal said. CHP officials later said that the reference in Baykal’s speech was actually to former French President Jacques Chirac, not to Sarkozy.
By “debate,” the CHP leader was referring to recent tension between deputies in Parliament, which erupted over the Gülhane Military Academy of Medicine’s (GATA) refusal to allow Emine Erdoğan, the prime minister’s wife, to enter the facility to visit an ailing thespian in 2007 on the grounds that she was wearing a headscarf.
The Prime Ministry released a statement on Tuesday following Baykal’s remarks and called Baykal’s remarks “libel.” “This claim of Baykal is a groundless libel that does not support diplomatic rules, bilateral relations with France and the Turkish Republic’s dignity,” said the statement. Stressing that no state official of any country could dare to send such a message to the prime minister of Turkey and that if the Turkish Republic’s prime minister received such a message he could not remain silent, the statement also called on Baykal to apologize publicly.
The French Embassy in Ankara also denied Baykal’s claims in a statement on Tuesday, recalling that the prime minister and President Abdullah Gül paid visits to France last July and October, respectively, with their wives, both wearing the headscarf. “The wives of Turkish leaders will always be hosted [by France] with pleasure, as they have been so far,” read the statement.
However, there was controversy regarding the date of the visit Baykal was referring to and the one mentioned in the Prime Ministry’s statement. Although the Prime Ministry said in its statement that Erdoğan visited France with his wife, Emine, in 2004, the Prime Ministry corrected the date in a second statement and said the visit in question was in 2008, when Sarkozy was in power. Emine Erdoğan did not accompany the prime minister during the 2004 visit.
