Turkish FM: Turkey vows for tenfold retaliation against Dutch govt.

“If the Netherlands cancels my flight, we will impose severe sanctions on them that will affect it economically and politically”, the foreign minister said in remarks in a TV interview on CNN Turk. “(Dutch) police are not allowing me to enter the consulate.

The political gatherings aim to boost support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan among Turkish expatriates, ahead of the April 16 referendum on constitutional change.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Ankara will impose “whatever diplomatic sanctions we have” on its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally the Netherlands in an escalating row between the two nations. On Saturday, Dutch officials prevented two Turkish cabinet ministers from addressing rallies in Rotterdam. “I am a foreign minister and I can go wherever I want”, he added.

Turkey has also summoned the Dutch envoy three times, presenting him with two formal protest notes addressed to the Dutch government. A spokesperson for the Dutch police, Patricia Wessels, told the Associated Press that the arrests were made for alleged violence and public order offenses, and that protesters threw bottles and rocks at police early Sunday.

Erdogan, who has been bolstered by nationalist rhetoric in his referendum campaign at home, first took up the Nazi comparisons earlier this month after German authorities cancelled a political rally after months of bickering with European governments.

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation chief Jens Stoltenberg urged Turkey to “show mutual respect, to be calm and have a measured approach to contribute to de-escalate the tensions”.

The President of Turkey has slammed Dutch officials after they stopped the country’s foreign minister from landing in Rotterdam.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has urged voters in his country to stop the “domino effect” of countries embracing the “wrong sort of populism”.

“It was very hard to agree with the Turkish foreign minister on the logistics of a visit he wanted to pay last Saturday to speak with a limited – in our view it should be a limited group of Turkish people in one of the official Turkish residences – it was very hard to come to a logistical arrangement”.

Omer Celik, Turkey’s minister in charge of European Union affairs, said Monday that his country should consider reviewing the migration deal to relax controls on people reaching Europe by walking into Greece or Bulgaria.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan claimed that the Dutch authorities displayed vestiges of Nazism and fascism.

Mr Rutte may be playing to the gallery ahead of Wednesday’s elections.

Notable by his absence was far-right MP Geert Wilders, whose Party for Freedom (PVV) is within a whisker of topping the polls even though he has largely eschewed traditional campaign events.

Mr Rutte also hit out at Ankara for treating Dutch people with Turkish roots as Turkish citizens.

“They are the vestiges of the Nazis, they are fascists”, Mr. Erdogan told an Istanbul rally on Saturday, days after he angrily compared moves to block rallies in Germany to “Nazi practices”.