The French government will summon the Turkish envoy in Paris for talks after what it termed "insults" by Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who accused Emmanuel Macron of suffering "brain death", the president's office said Friday, reports FRANCE 24.
Erdogan repeated an expression Macron had used to describe NATO to hit back at the French leader over his criticism of fellow NATO member Turkey's intervention against Kurdish forces in Syria.
"This is not a statement, these are insults," an Élysee official said, adding: "The ambassador will be summoned to the ministry to explain things."
The official added that France had "no comment to make on these insults."
Macron has been one of the most vocal critics of Ankara's offensive against a Kurdish militia that took the fight to the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, with the backing of a US-led anti-IS coalition.
During a press conference alongside NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg in Paris on Thursday, Macron said Ankara had presented its NATO allies with a "fait accompli" by launching a military operation "that endangers the actions of the anti-IS coalition."