France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, initiated a call to wish Eid Mubarak ("Happy Eid") to Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Islamic world, Erdogan’s directorate of communications said on March 31.

Given that Erdogan is a leader of the Islamic world and represents the world in question, such a call is only natural. Though Macron’s office has not seen it as necessary to inform the people of France that their head of state has made the call.

Four days earlier, on March 27, Macron took aim at the Turkish government for carrying out "systematic attacks" on freedoms, according to media reports.

“[Europe] needs a Turkey that assumes its responsibilities for European security, [and] continues on its democratic path by respecting the commitments it has made,” Macron was cited as saying.

Macron did not elaborate which democratic path he was talking about. The Erdogan regime, meanwhile, has served European security by providing a massive "refugee camp" since 2016.

In 2016, the regime signed an infamous migrant readmission deal with the EU. The deal (based on the deportation of asylum seekers to a third country) is actually illegal according to European legislation.

Lately, some British observers have circulated that the EU would rather pay homage to Erdogan and secure more help from Ankara in European defence than increase its own military spending. This is bunk. Macron’s reference to “the Erdogan regime’s responsibilities for European security” is concerned with the other matters, we can deduce.

On March 24, the Erdogan regime detained Yasin Akgul, a Turkish national working as a photojournalist for Agence France-Presse (AFP), along with dozens of colleagues for reporting the protests held against the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. He was released on March 27.