President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not known for his fondness of diplomats, diplomatic niceties or, for that matter, diplomacy itself. It doesn’t matter if the diplomats are Turkish or foreign. He has made his distaste for them known.

While he was still prime minister, Erdogan gave Turkey’s ambassador in Berlin a public dressing down in 2006 over instructions from the ministry to only accept photographs without Islamic headscarves from women for official documents. He was applauded by expatriate Turkish supporters there, undermining the prestige of the ambassador in the country where he was serving.

Erdogan chastised retired Turkish diplomats in 2009 for criticizing his outburst against Israeli President Shimon Peres at Davos, calling them “mon cher” and suggesting they never supported the good things their country did. “Mon cher” (French for “my dear”) is an affectionate greeting Turkish diplomats once used for each other. Today, it is used derogatively toward some Turkish diplomats to suggest their reputed effete and affected nature.

This time it was Western diplomats in Turkey who incurred Erdogan’s wrath. Their sin was attending the trial of prominent journalists Can Dundar and Erdem Gul. Both face espionage charges for reporting on illegal arms shipments to anti-regime forces in Syria in 2014 by Turkey’s intelligence service.