That date is completely wrong and the rest of this comment is full of inconsistency anyway. The root of this claim is only traceable to a fraudulent historian known for pro-islamic hate, propaganda, and fictitious historical Turkish/Ottoman revisionism, named Mustafa Armagan. Yes, the sculptor wanted to make a statue for the Suez Canal, but the directors involved declined. There is no evidence the Ottomans paid for it, that the statue was crafted before the plan to give it to the US, that the Ottomans had enough say in the Canal's decoration when the project was conceived and constructed during a more autonomous Egyptian rule with heavy French influence, or that anything was modified in physical form from an Egyptian figure. The only thing thing confirmed to exist in 1876 was the torch arm which didn't even arrive until late 1876. The statue was not fully erected until 1886. The design was reconfigured, not some "statue sitting in a Parisian warehouse" because the designer wanted to make it, not the Ottomans.

It's really not surprising that a generic semi-European woman would have some traits maybe closer to Mediterranean than French because it was an homage to the Colossus of Rhodes.