ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish prosecutors opened an investigation on Tuesday over statements by Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders about President Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish state media reported.
Wilders called Erdogan a terrorist on Twitter on Monday and asked Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to expel the Turkish ambassador to the Netherlands. He also called for Turkey’s expulsion from NATO.
Prosecutors in Ankara have launched an investigation into Wilders through Twitter posts, including photos and insults written against Erdogan, the state news agency Anadolu said, citing the prosecutor’s office.
Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, is one of Europe’s most prominent far-right politicians and has been a key figure in shaping the immigration debate in his country, although he has never been in government.
His comments provoked reaction from Turkish authorities.
“This fascist who attacked our president would have been a damn Nazi if he had lived during World War II. If he were living in the Middle East now, he would have been a Daesh killer,” Omer Celik, spokesman for Erdogan’s AK Party, said on Twitter, using another name for Islamic State.
Wilders was acquitted in a hate speech trial in 2011 for comments that compared Islam to Nazism and called for a ban on the Koran. In September 2020, he was acquitted by a discrimination appeal court, although the court upheld the conviction for intentionally insulting Moroccans.
Erdogan last year filed a separate criminal action in Turkey against Wilders over an image of him with the caption “terrorist” and a separate image of a ship sinking with a Turkish flag.
The prosecution could not be reached on Tuesday to say whether the complaint led to an investigation.
Rutte criticized Turkish legal action against Wilders, saying the politician was exercising his right to freedom of expression.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Dominic Evans)