Ankara: Turkey condemned the burning of the Quran by a far-right politician near a mosque in Denmark on Friday.
“We condemn in the strongest terms that the hate crime committed in Sweden against our holy book Quran is allowed to be committed again in Copenhagen, Denmark today,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“The fact that this despicable act, which was carried out in Denmark after Sweden and the Netherlands, was not prevented despite all our warnings, is worrying as it reveals the dangerous dimensions of religious intolerance and hatred in Europe by abusing the so-called freedom environment,” the statement added.
Rasmus Paludan, leader of the Danish far-right political party Hard Line, burned the Quran in front of a mosque in Copenhagen on Friday, Xinhua news agency reported.
Paludan earlier burned the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm last Saturday which caused Turkey to postpone a trilateral mechanism meeting with Sweden and Finland on their NATO bid.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry on Friday summoned Danish Ambassador to Ankara Danny Annan ahead of the demonstration and asked for the reversal of the permission given to Rasmus Paludan.
The protest involving the Quran is the third of its kind recently.
Ankara summoned the Dutch envoy in Ankara on Tuesday to convey its protest after Edwin Wagensveld, leader of a far-right group Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West, tore out pages from a Quran in the Netherlands.
–IANS