Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has harshly slammed French President Emmanuel Macron over his criticisms of the Turkish military operation into Syria, while urging him to check his own “brain death” before talking about the status of NATO, in reference to the French president’s remarks that the alliance was suffering a “brain death.”

“The president of France, Mr. Macron, I am saying this to you from Turkey and I will say it at NATO as well. You should first check your own brain death,” Erdoğan said at a groundbreaking ceremony for a university complex in Istanbul on Nov. 29.