Turkey Recalls Ambassador to Austria Over Pro-Kurdish Rally in Vienna

Turkey will give full support to an operation to take the Syrian border town of Jarablus from Islamic State, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Tuesday, after Syrian rebels said they were preparing an assault from Turkish soil.

Following the dispute between Israel and Turkey over the IDF’s recent attack in Gaza, which erupted only two days after the reconciliation agreement between the countries was approved by the Turkish Parliament, Turkey’s Foreign Minister announced that new ambassadors to Ankara and Tel Aviv will be appointed in the coming days.

“Unfortunately, the ground on which our bilateral relations and cooperation with Austria can be normally sustained has disappeared”, he said.

Kern also denounced the EU negotiations with Turkey about its potential future membership of the Union by calling it “fiction”, and suggested putting an end to these talks. “The normalization of our relations with Turkey does not mean that we will remain silent in the face of its baseless condemnations”, said a statement from the foreign ministry.

“We saw that… the PKK and its supporters were given permission to stage a demonstration in Vienna”, Cavusoglu said, commenting on the issue.

“We can not remain insensitive to this attitude supporting terrorism”. In early August, Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern sharply criticized Turkey for the crackdown launched following the failed anti-government coup on July 15.

Austrian Defence Minister Hans-Peter Doskozil meanwhile compared Turkey to a “dictatorship”, adding that “such a state has no place in the EU”. Çavuşoğlu slammed the Austrian chancellor’s remarks in response, saying Austria was the “capital of radical racism”.

He also cited rising anti-Turkish rhetoric in Austria. It was the second time the diplomat has been ordered to the ministry in a spat over the age of consent in Turkey.