President Erdoğan says Netherlands to 'pay price' for banning Turkish minister

Turkish FM Çavuşoğlu said on Sunday the Netherlands was the "capital of fascism", President Erdoğan said that Netherlands to 'pay price'
Sunday, 12 March 2017 17:20

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoğlu said on Sunday the Netherlands was the "capital of fascism" during a speech in France, as a dispute over Ankara's political campaigning among Turkish immigrants in Europe continues to simmer.

"The Netherlands, the so-called capital of democracy, and I say this in quotation marks because they are actually the capital of fascism...," Çavuşoğlu said during his visit to the northeastern French city of Metz.

Earlier Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he appropriately accused the Dutch government of "Nazism and fascism, saying only those types of regimes would bar foreign ministers from traveling within their countries.

"If you sacrifice your relationship with Turkey for the elections on Wednesday, you will pay the price ... We have yet not done what is required," Erdoğan also said during a live televised address on Sunday.

He also said Turkey would retaliate for the ousting of the Turkish family affairs minister from the Netherlands. Erdoğan said: "I have said that I had thought that Nazism was over, but that I was wrong. Nazism is alive in the West."

On Saturday, Family Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya was denied entrance to the consulate after a visit to Germany, with Dutch police blocking her car. Both Dutch and German authorities called off Kaya's campaign meetings which were to come ahead of a Turkish referendum on constitutional changes.

Kaya decided to travel to the Netherlands after the Dutch authorities refused to let Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoglu land over security concerns.