Erdoğan described the treatment of Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya, minister for families, as shameless and accused the Dutch of “behaving like a banana republic”.
“If you can sacrifice Turkish-Dutch relations for an election on Wednesday, you will pay the price,” Erdogan said in a speech in Istanbul. “I thought nazism was over, but I was wrong. In fact, nazism is alive in the west.”
He called on international organisations to impose sanctions against the Netherlands but did not say if there would be direct repercussions from his country.
The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, who faces a stiff political test in parliamentary elections on Wednesday, said Turkey had crossed a diplomatic line. “This has never happened before, a country saying someone is not welcome and then them coming regardless,” he said, referring to Kaya’s decision to travel to Rotterdam by car after her colleague, the foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, was banned from flying in to the Netherlands on Saturday.
Branding the move irresponsible and demanding Erdoğan apologise for his references to nazism, Rutte nonetheless said he would continue to seek a diplomatic solution. His words appeared to fall on deaf ears, however. On Sunday night, speaking in the French city of Metz, Çavuşoğlu called the Netherlands the “capital of fascism”.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has warned the Netherlands it will “pay the price” for a diplomatic stand-off after a Turkish minister was blocked from visiting her country’s consulate in Rotterdam and tensions between the two countries exploded in angry protests.
Erdoğan described the treatment of Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya, minister for families, as shameless and accused the Dutch of “behaving like a banana republic”.
“If you can sacrifice Turkish-Dutch relations for an election on Wednesday, you will pay the price,” Erdogan said in a speech in Istanbul. “I thought nazism was over, but I was wrong. In fact, nazism is alive in the west.”
He called on international organisations to impose sanctions against the Netherlands but did not say if there would be direct repercussions from his country.
The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, who faces a stiff political test in parliamentary elections on Wednesday, said Turkey had crossed a diplomatic line. “This has never happened before, a country saying someone is not welcome and then them coming regardless,” he said, referring to Kaya’s decision to travel to Rotterdam by car after her colleague, the foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, was banned from flying in to the Netherlands on Saturday.
Branding the move irresponsible and demanding Erdoğan apologise for his references to nazism, Rutte nonetheless said he would continue to seek a diplomatic solution. His words appeared to fall on deaf ears, however. On Sunday night, speaking in the French city of Metz, Çavuşoğlu called the Netherlands the “capital of fascism”.
“We were held up by a wall of police officers who prevented us going into the consulate,” she said. “We were treated very inhumanely and unethically.”
Koenders disputed Kaya’s account and stressed she had not been deported from the country. He said the decision to drive her to the German border was taken in consultation with the Turkish government and the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini.
“It’s a very unfortunate case. She shouldn’t have come and she knows that,” Koenders said.
In Turkey, members of Erdoğan’s AKP party protested by squeezing oranges and drinking the juice, while the Turkish flag was briefly hoisted over the Dutch consulate in Istanbul. The Dutch foreign ministry lodged a protest against the removal of its flag, which was later restored.
The residences of the Dutch ambassador, chargé d’affaires and consul general in Ankara were sealed off on Saturday night in what were described as security measures.
The Christian Democrat leader, Sybrand Buma, one of Rutte’s main rivals in Wednesday’s election, called for the EU to abandon Turkey’s accession treaty, which dates from 1963. That would mean Turkish citizens living in the Netherlands would lose their right to dual nationality.
Police arrested 16 people in Rotterdam during the protests on Sunday morning. Most of those detained have since returned home. Seven people were injured and several shop windows were smashed in the Plein 1940 square, but large-scale violence was avoided.
Rotterdam’s mayor, Ahmed Aboutaleb, said Turkey’s consul general had given him false assurances that Kaya would not be going to the consulate. “He lied flat out. He called on people to come to the consulate where the minister would be giving a speech,” Aboutaleb said.
In response to Erdoğan’s comments, the mayor said: “They ought to know that I’m the mayor of a city that was bombarded by the Nazis.”
Source : Theguardian
