Tensions run high after Netherlands bars Turkish officials
ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS— A dispute between NATO allies Turkey and the Netherlands hit a new low Sunday, with a Turkish minister escorted out of the country less than a day after Turkey’s foreign minister was denied entry, prompting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to call the Dutch “Nazi remnants.”
The diplomatic clash was over plans by Turkish officials to campaign in the Netherlands for a referendum who “don’t know any better” with his program to “de-Islamize the Netherlands,” ban the Quran and immigration from Muslim countries and shut the country’s estimated 475 mosques.
“Wilders is saying what the loweducated people want to hear . . . ‘Immigrants are taking our jobs, they are raping our women,’ ” said Pronk, back home. Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya had arrived in the country from Germany but was prevented from entering Turkey’s diplomatic compound in Rotterdam, setting up a standoff with armed police. She was later sent under escort back to Germany.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called Erdogan’s Nazi comment “a crazy remark,” while Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb said the Turkish consul general was guilty of a who doesn’t vote for Wilders.
Islam, relatively new in the Netherlands, has spread as increasing numbers of native Dutch are abandoning religion. The Netherlands’ oldest mosque, in The Hague, was built in 1955. Its imam, Naeem Ahmad, dismisses Wilders’ program as “not possible.”
He says the Muslim community is “scandalous deception” after he allegedly denied that the minister was coming despite government warnings to stay away.
Hundreds of pro-Turkey protesters scuffled with police into the night in Rotterdam.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was barred from landing in the Netherlands on Saturday. Turkish officials closed off the Dutch Embassy in Ankara and said its ambassador was no longer welcome. thriving. The Mobarak Mosque gets new year’s greeting cards from its Dutch neighbours. Before the ubiquity of GPS, people would lead worshippers who had trouble finding the building right to the door, he said.
“In what other country would that happen?” he asked. “The majority of the people in the Netherlands are still very liberal, very welcoming.”