Netherlands will pay the price: Turkey's Erdoğan

Turkey told the Netherlands on March 12 that it would retaliate in the "harshest way" after Turkish ministers were barred from speaking in Rotterdam in a row over campaigning among Turks living in the country.

"If you sacrifice your relationship with Turkey for the elections [on March 15], you will pay the price," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on March 12 at a ceremony in Istanbul.

"We have yet not done what is required," Erdoğan added.

Erdoğan said the West "has shown its true face."

"I thought that Nazism was over, but I was wrong," he said. "In fact, Nazism is up on its feet in the West."

On March 11, the Dutch government first canceled Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu's flight permit to the Netherlands and then blocked a convoy carrying Turkish Family Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya from entering the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam in Turkey's latest argument with an EU ally.

Kaya was escorted by the Dutch police to Germany after she was declared "persona non grata" amid a police intervention against Turks who gathered in front of the consulate building in Rotterdam.

An apology from the Netherlands will not be enough to normalize relations, Çavuşoğlu said March 12, adding that the country's actions would have consequences.

He also reiterated that the Dutch ambassador to Turkey, Cornelis van Rij, could not re-enter Turkey.

"To begin with, this will have a response. Apologizing is not enough. We have begun to give a response and said the ambassador should not come to the country and he cannot. We will take steps and then the Netherlands will apologize. Otherwise, we will continue to take these steps," Çavuşoğlu told reporters in Metz, France.

Kaya said...