Turkey blasts far-right politician Wilders for cartoon insulting Erdoğan

ANKARA

Turkish officials have slammed Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders for a Twitter post he shared of a cartoon insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

"Fascism is not in our book, it's in your book. Social justice is in our book," Erdoğan said at a meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the eastern Malatya province, calling Wilders a "fascist."

"The forces that make the world uninhabitable have put us on the target board because we disrupt their games and reveal their true faces," Erdoğan said, adding: "We will carry on."

“When truth spoken to their faces Europe’s loser racists showed up again. Trying to exploit Islamophobia and xenophobia. Time has come to stop Europe’s spoiled politicians with fascist mindset,” Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu tweeted on Oct. 25.

Turkish Presidential Communications Directorate head Fahrettin Altun also criticized Wilders.

“Europe is an increasingly dangerous place for Muslims. The dog-whistle politics of offensive caricatures, accusations of separatism against Muslims and mosque raids isn’t about freedom of expression,” he tweeted.

“It’s about intimidating and reminding Muslims that they are welcome to keep the European economy going, but they will never belong — against the backdrop of lectures about integration. Everything we see about Muslims in European public culture today is eerily familiar to the demonization of the European Jewry in the 1920s,” Altun said.

“Some European leaders today do not just target Muslims in their midst. They attack our sacred values, our scripture, our prophet and our political leaders — our way of life,” he said.

“Europe’s hostility towards Muslims and efforts to ‘discipline’ them is inseparable from the increasingly widespread hostility towards Islam, Turkey and our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,” Altun said.

“Here’s what those Europeans need to understand: Muslims won’t go away because you don’t want us. We won’t turn the other cheek when you insult us,” he said, adding that Turkey will defend itself at all costs.

The AKP’s parliamentary group chairman, Naci Bostancı, said Wilders “is prisoner to his dirty rhetoric.” “We hope the Dutch, who belong to the civilized world, will do what’s necessary,” he said, adding his expectation that the politician will be elected again in the next Dutch elections.

“Despicable, enemy of humanity and fascist ... It is a duty to fight these despicable fascists,” AKP Spokesperson Ömer Çelik said.
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