The diplomatic split between them develops into a domino effect Turkey and series European countriesoccasion anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim activities in these countries at the initiative of far-right actors. After the first case that happened in Sweden and led to Turkey suspending the accession negotiations of the country (as well as Finland) NATOnew fronts have opened with Denmark and the Netherlands, whose ambassadors were summoned yesterday to the Turkish Foreign Ministry to present a protest.

The rock of scandal is Rasmus Paludanfar-right activist with Danish and Swedish citizenship who angered Turkey by organizing a protest in Stockholm on January 21, during which he defiantly burned the Quran. President of Turkey Tayyip Erdogan condemned the Swedish government for allowing the event to take place and canceled an important meeting in Brussels that was supposed to try to overcome differences preventing Ankara from giving the green light to two Scandinavian countries joining NATO.

In an interview with the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, Paludan said that he was ready to organize a similar event in front of the Turkish embassy in Copenhagen and that this would be repeated every Friday until Turkey withdraws its objections and signs an agreement on Sweden’s entry into the Alliance. . . . According to press reports, the far-right activist plans to start his anti-Muslim activities in Denmark by burning the Koran in front of a Copenhagen mosque, and then move his activities outside the embassies of Turkey and Russia. Yesterday afternoon, he burned a copy of the Quran in front of Yazami and the Turkish embassy in Copenhagen. Trying to justify his provocative initiatives through Instagram, he stated that he was a “Christian in a Christian country”, which, in his opinion, gives him the right to such actions against foreigners and non-believers.

A lawyer by profession, 41-year-old Paludan is the founder of the far-right Hard Line party, which has taken an aggressive stance towards immigrants and moved into political marginalization by failing to elect a representative in parliament, regional or even municipal elections. In Denmark, the maximum percentage received by the Hard Line in the national contest was 1.8%, while in the last parliamentary elections in Sweden it received only 156 votes nationwide.

Demonstrations against defilement in Pakistan, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, while the Turkish Foreign Ministry called the ambassadors of Denmark and the Netherlands to protest.

According to the Anadolu agency, the Turkish Foreign Ministry “expressed a strong protest” to Danish Minister Dani Annan about Paludan’s permission to hold the meeting, considering it a “hate crime” and characterizing the attitude of the Danish authorities. as “unacceptable”. The Turkish Foreign Ministry acted in the same tone as Dutch Ambassador Joep Wijnands, to whom he protested the “heinous attack” on the Quran at a similar anti-Muslim event that took place in The Hague when Edwin Wagensveld, leader of the far-right Pegida party, he vomited pages of the Koran and defiantly trampled them near the building of the Dutch Parliament.

Reactions

Recent cases of desecration of the Koran have caused a wave of protest demonstrations in a number of Muslim countries after yesterday’s regular Friday prayers. In the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, numerous police forces stopped angry demonstrators as they tried to march on the Swedish embassy. Similar demonstrations took place in Kabul and other cities in Afghanistan, and in Beirut, thousands of people gathered in the central Martyrs’ Square. Protests spread in Iraq, where the influential cleric and politician Muqtada al-Sadr warned that the desecration of the Quran would “bring divine wrath on the perpetrators.”