Børge Brende doesn’t outright reject Turkish political campaigning in Norway

Børge BrendeBørge Brende ( Conservative Party ).

There is a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and the Netherlands after the Turkish Foreign Minister was refused entry to the Netherlands recently. The Netherlands have refused two Turkish ministers the right to campaign in the country.

‘Norway has a high threshold for denying people entry’, said the Foreign Minister, Børge Brende.

When asked directly about a Turkish minister running an election campaign in Norway, Brende responded as follows:

‘If it happened that the Turkish ambassador reported that a Turkish minister was interested in coming to Norway, we would deal with it in the proper manner.

We have freedom of expression, but it also means that they must accept that we are addressing the issues we are very concerned about, for example, freedom of the press in Turkey’, said the Foreign Minister.

He is reluctant to directly enter into the subject of the conflict between Turkey and the Netherlands, but urged both parties to keep calm.

‘It is important that this doesn’t escalate further. That one should accept the word of the other. We must manage to handle this type of problem without using words that don’t belong in the public debate’, says Brende.

During the conflict, Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has compared both the Dutch and the Germans to fascists and Nazis.

Turkey wants to campaign, targeting Turks living outside Turkey in various European countries, to vote for Erdogan’s controversial referendum. The constitutional amendments proposed would give the president greater power, and have been criticized by many European countries.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today