Dutch politician Geert Wilders says Turkey should be expelled from Nato. Wilders cites close ties between the Turkish government and Hamas.
Wilders was reacting to a highly critical comment piece by Sinan Ciddi, Turkey expert and non-resident senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Geert Wilders, who resoundingly won the recent national elections in the Netherlands and is working on forming a new government, agrees with this conclusion and says he wants Turkey out of Nato.
The statement comes while the outgoing prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, is positioning himself to become the next secretary general of Nato. International leaders are starting to rally behind the Dutchman. Both US President Joe Biden and the British government have recently voiced their support for Rutte.
It is not the first time Wilders has made dissident noises regarding Western defence.
Earlier this week, he called the Netherlands “the village idiot of Europe” because it is attracting too many Ukrainian refugees. According to Wilders, Ukrainians are coming “not because of the war, but because of free housing, free healthcare and our jobs”.
In December, he said in a debate in the House of Representatives that the Netherlands should stop military aid to Ukraine until its own defence is in order.
Both statements were eagerly shared in Russian media. But Wilders has also been highly critical of Russia.
When Navalny was murdered, Wilders called it “horrible”. Adding, “Navalny dies in a barbaric penal colony of a barbaric regime”.
The essay by Sinan Ciddi accuses Turkey of being a patron of Hamas, offering safe harbour and material support. He also shows that Ankara is supporting the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who are disrupting international shipping routes in the Red Sea and attacking American troops in the Near East.
Turkey merits being placed on the list of “terrorist sanctuary” countries monitored by the America State Department, Ciddi claims.
“There is one enduring reason why multiple U.S. administrations continue to embrace Erdogan no matter what he does, including supporting major terrorist causes: It is based on the U.S.’s pathological fear of “losing Turkey” like it lost Iran in 1979. This is a mistake, and a better way to look at our relationship with Ankara is to ask: What is left to lose?”
