Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced on Friday that his country would not allow Turkish election campaign events, including speeches by Turkish politicians, to be held within its borders.
“As chancellor, I want to put an end to this. Speeches by Turkish politicians that are part of the election campaign are unwanted in Austria, and we will no longer allow them,” Kurz told Oe1 radio.
Kurz also brought to mind that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had been trying to use the Turkish diaspora in Europe for political purposes for years.
On Wednesday, Erdoğan announced that Turkey would hold snap elections on June 24.
Austria was one of the EU countries that refused to host rallies before the 2017 Turkish constitutional referendum, which established a new system of governance. In March 2017, then-Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern called on the European Union to ban Turkish political campaigns across the bloc.