Pegida

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has summoned Denmark's Ambassador to Türkiye Danny Annan after Danish authorities permitted a provocative protest "involving an attack against the holy book of Quran" on Jan. 27, Foreign Ministry sources have said.

Turkey's foreign ministry said Tuesday it summoned the Dutch ambassador following a demonstration targeting Islam's holy book, days after a similar protest in Sweden tensed relations.

Türkiye summoned the Dutch ambassador in Ankara Joep Wijnands over "a vile attack" on the Quran in The Hague and conveyed Ankara's condemnation, the Foreign Ministry said on Jan. 24.

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms the vile attack of an anti-Islamic person in The Hague, Netherlands, on Jan. 22, targeting our holy book, the Holy Quran," said the statement.

German civil rights groups are mobilizing against the newly elected far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and other more hardline groups, vowing to avert the even stronger rightward lurch seen in neighboring countries, Reuters reports.

Dresden, Germany (dpa) - Thousands of supporters of the anti-migrant organization Pegida gathered in the east German city of Dresden to celebrate the second anniversary of the group's founding Sunday.

According to the research group Durchgezaehlt, between 6500 and 8500 people gathered at Dresden's Theaterplatz, with several hundred counterdemonstrators protesting some distance away.

A personal police guard has been given to a Turkish-origin German politician who has received multiple death threats after the Bundestag's approval of a resolution recognizing the World War I-era killings of Anatolian Armenians at the hands of Ottomans as "genocide."

The founder of Germany's xenophobic and anti-Islamic Pegida movement was May 3 convicted of inciting racial hatred and fined nearly 10,000 euros for branding refugees "cattle" and "scum" on social media.

Germany's right-wing populist AfD on May 1 adopted an anti-Islam policy in a manifesto that also demands curbs to immigration, as a poll showed it is now the country's third strongest party.
 

Shocked German officials on Feb. 22 condemned two "disgusting" incidents involving anti-migrant mobs in the ex-communist east of the country, including a crowd cheering a blaze at a planned refugee shelter.

Support for German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative alliance has slumped to its lowest since July 2002 as opposition over her liberal refugee policy grows, a survey showed on Jan. 31, while a right-wing populist party polled a record high.