Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, whose flight clearance for Rotterdam was cancelled by the Netherlands on Saturday, voiced his reaction to Dutch police who forcefully dispersed Turkish demonstrators in Rotterdam with dogs and water cannons, calling them “dogs of Wilders,” in reference to far-right politician Geert Wilders, on Sunday.
“Wilders’ın Köpekleri / Dogs of Wilders,” said Çavuşoğlu in a Twitter message accompanied by photos of Turks being attacked by police dogs.
On Sunday President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, referring to the Turkish proverb “A dog does not bite another dog,” likened Europeans who kept silent about what happened in the Netherland on Saturday to dogs, saying, “There is no voice [reaction] from the Europeans because they don’t bite each other.”
The Turkish minister of family and social policy was expelled from the Netherlands on Saturday night when she entered the country after the Dutch government decided to cancel the flight clearance for the Turkish foreign minister’s aircraft earlier in the day.
Before the Netherlands’ decision, the Turkish foreign minister had threatened the Dutch with sanctions in the event of cancellations.