Turkey protests Belgium over PKK tent in Brussels

Serkan Demirtaş - ANKARA

Turkey has delivered an official protest note to Belgium for allowing the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to set up a tent in Brussels, urging Belgian authorities to swiftly remove the tent and to prevent the organization’s activities on its soil.

Belgian Ambassador to Turkey Marc Trenteseau was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on March 20 in protest at the PKK’s erecting of a tent in the city center. In the meantime, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu held a phone conversation with his Belgian counterpart Didier Reynders on March 20, expressing Turkey’s sensitivities over the issue.

According to Foreign Ministry officials, Çavuşoğlu underlined that allowing a terror organization to erect a tent in the center of Europe was unacceptable and expressed Turkey’s expectations for its swift removal. 

“This has nothing to do with freedom of expression or the right to assembly,” Çavuşoğlu said, calling on Belgian authorities to ban the activities of the PKK in the country.

The PKK is a terror organization like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), he said, adding that one should not distinguish between terror organizations.