Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu,is the instigator who wanted to stir up the Turkish expat community in Rotterdam at a pro-President Erdogan rally, but who was promptly banned by the Dutch government. Dutch police had to use dogs and water cannons to break up the violent protest by Turkish Muslim demonstrators.

Independent He’s not impressed with the Dutch politicians, and, sitting in Ankara, sees no discernible difference between the Dutch conservatives, socialists or the far-right Freedom party , led by Geert Wilders.

For the Turks, the re-elected prime minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte is, for all practical purposes, just as obnoxious as Wilders. President Erdogan himself has gone so far as to say that the Dutch are mere “Nazi remnants”, which is as offensive as it is ahistorical. Hence the row.

The Turkish foreign minister says that we in the West “all have the same mentality,” continuing: “Where will you go? Where are you taking Europe? You have begun to collapse Europe. You are dragging Europe into the abyss. Holy wars will soon begin in Europe.”

This is the real clash of civilisations – a refusal by the West to accept the equality of Muslims and Muslim nations. The Trump travel ban is the most explicit example of this; but it is there as an undercurrent in everything from Brexit to Austrian neo-Nazism.

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