Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 15
Trend:
Turkey may apply economic sanctions against the Netherlands in the near future, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told CNN Turk.
Kurtulmus was commenting on the recent crisis in the Turkish-Dutch relations.
Earlier, the Dutch authorities didn’t allow Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Turkish Minister of Family and Social Policies Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya to enter the Netherlands to participate in a meeting with the local Turkish community ahead of the April 16 referendum on constitutional reforms in Turkey.
Kurtulmus announced that as a response measure, Dutch Ambassador to Turkey Cornelis van Rij is banned from entering the country. All diplomatic flights from the Netherlands to Turkey and all high-level state meetings with representatives of the Netherlands were cancelled.
Also, Kurtulmus recommended that the Turkish Parliament abolish agreements on friendship between the two countries.
“This is a very serious and deep crisis in the relations between the two countries,” Kurtulmus said. “The Netherlands initiated this crisis. We will react accordingly to such an attitude. We applied only political sanctions for now.”
He said that Turkey won’t withdraw its ambassador to the Netherlands at this stage.
“Obviously, relations between the two countries cannot continue as usual, but now we are waiting to see what stance the Netherlands will take,” Kurtulmus added.