TURKEY’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seems able to spot Nazis where no one else can. On March 11th Mr Erdogan called the Netherlands “Nazi remnants and fascists”, after Dutch authorities prevented his ministers from entering the country to campaign among Dutch-Turkish dual nationals for a “yes” vote in Turkey’s upcoming constitutional referendum. Days earlier, he claimed to have uncovered “Nazi practices” in Germany after authorities there cancelled similar events featuring Turkish officials.
Having declared the Dutch ambassador persona non grata and closed Turkish airspace to diplomatic flights from the Netherlands, Mr Erdogan may soon have to widen his struggle against fascism. Belgium, Austria, and Denmark have all made clear they would not welcome election rallies by Turkish ministers. On March 14th he invented a breathtakingly false claim that the Dutch were responsible for the massacre of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. (In fact Serbian militia carried out the massacres; Dutch peacekeepers were overrun, and failed to stop them.)
To European ears, this all sounds like a horrible joke. Mr...Continue reading
Souce: Europe http://ift.tt/2msA1l2
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