In his first British newspaper interview since his party’s landslide victory last week, Recep Tayyip Erdogan told The Times that the former French President, who heads a convention on the EU’s future, should “think before speaking� — particularly in the post September 11 world.

Mr Erdogan, whose Justice and Development Party (AK) has strong Islamist roots, decried the idea that the EU was some sort of “Christian club� and suggested that M Giscard’s attitude would only hurt the already fragile dialogue between the Christian and Muslim worlds.