BERLIN: Turkey on Tuesday scrapped all future campaign appearances by its politicians in Germany ahead of April’s referendum on expanding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s powers, amid a heated diplomatic row.

The sudden decision came after three weeks of furious exchanges between Turkey and the European Union over the pro-Erdogan rallies which have already been banned in some of the bloc’s member states.

“All future events that were planned have been cancelled. That is a decision that was made in Ankara,” said a Cologne-based spokeswoman for Erdogan’s AKP party.

Separately, Zafer Sirakaya, president of the pro-Erdogan group that organised the rallies, said the events were cancelled over security reasons. He told the WirtschaftsWoche weekly that “extremist groups like the [Kurdish separatist] PKK had carried out 11 attacks against our infrastructure”.

Turkish ministers eager to tap into 1.4 million voters in Germany have sought to campaign in Europe’s most populous country to whip up support for a “yes” vote in the April 16 referendum on scrapping the prime minister’s post and creating a executive presidency.

Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb separately appealed for calm on Tuesday among the Dutch city’s sizeable Turkish community, after an unauthorised pro-Turkey demonstration in the port city flared into violence 10 days ago.

“The word is that Turkish officials are calling on European Turks to make their voices heard,” he told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper in an interview.

“Of course, we will never dispute or deny Rotterdam Turks’ involvement and loyalty to Turkey. However, what we don’t want is that the call disrupts the local community,” Aboutaleb said.

But Erdogan kept up his attacks, telling a rally in Ankara on Tuesday that a “yes” vote was the best response to what he called a “fascist and cruel” Europe.

“This Europe, like before World War II, is a racist, fascist, cruel Europe ... An anti-Islam and anti-Turkish Europe,” Erdogan said in his latest onslaught against the European Union. “Give such a response, that those watching us on the screen, those watching us abroad, our citizens, all of Europe, all of the world can hear this,” he told cheering crowds.

Fed up over the row, Austria’s government said it would put a draft law to parliament on banning foreign politicians from campaigning in the country.

Germany has repeatedly said it prizes relations with Turkey, because it is home to three million people of Turkish origin — a legacy of the “guest worker” (Gastarbeiter) programme of the 1960s and 1970s.

Turkey on Sunday protested a pro-Kurdish rally in Frankfurt where demonstrators carried symbols of the PKK, which is listed as a terror organisation not just by Turkey but also the EU and the United States.

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2017