French President Emmanuel Macron should determine the level of his own “brain death,” before accusing NATO of lacking gray matter, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan has quipped.

France has no right to criticize Turkey’s military incursion into Syria, or to make presumptions about NATO as a whole, Erdogan said in a speech at the University of Marmara in Istanbul on Friday. The Turkish leader even attacked Macron personally, retooling the French president’s claim that NATO was suffering from “brain death.”

First of all, have your own brain death checked. These statements are suitable only to people like you who are in a state of brain death

The broadside comes just a day after Paris and Ankara exchanged heated words over NATO and the conflict in Syria. Macron had warned that NATO could not show solidarity with Turkey’s controversial military operations.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu quickly shot back that France was a “sponsor of terrorism,” apparently referring to Macron’s previous meetings with Kurdish representatives.

Also on rt.com NATO spat: Macron slams Ankara’s operation in Syria, Turkish FM calls him ‘sponsor of terrorism’

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