Ankara on Saturday warned its citizens against traveling to the US and Europe, apparently in response to similar warnings against traveling to Turkey. The US and major European countries advised their citizens not to attend mass events and avoid crowded tourist attractions in Turkey. .
The warnings came as diplomatic tensions escalated over Turkey’s refusal to allow Sweden and Finland to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Ankara recently voiced its dissatisfaction with anti-Islamic protests organized by a right-wing extremist who was allowed to burn copies of the Koran in front of its embassies in Stockholm and Copenhagen.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry warned of a “dangerous level of religious intolerance and hatred in Europe”.
“Verbal and physical attacks on aliens and acts of racism have taken place recently in the United States,” a separate statement said.
Finland and Sweden broke decades of military non-alignment and applied to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But the application for membership must be approved by all thirty members of the alliance.
Turkey and Hungary are the only two countries that have not yet ratified these two applications.
The Hungarian parliament is expected to ratify the two requests next month.
But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan still refuses to accept the two requests, accusing the two countries of harboring Kurdish activists and supporters of the PKK and its allies in northern Syria and Iraq, whom it calls “terrorists.”
