Establishment, Nationalists Face Off in Dutch Election

The latter incident provoked high-profile protests by Turks in the Rotterdam city center on Saturday night. “You are not the prime minister of the Netherlands, but of the foreigners”.

After Saturday’s diplomatic incident Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said: “Nazism is still widespread in the West”.

“They want to leave London, so they mainly think about Frankfurt and Amsterdam”, he said.

“We are Dutch and this is our country”. If Wilders wins Wednesday’s general elections that “would send a signal to the rest of the world”, he said.

Dutch journalist Chris Aalberts says, “I would say this is about globalization”.

Following the vote in the Netherlands, the French go to the polls next month with far-right candidate Marine Le Pen now in second place behind centrist Emmanuel Macron.

As recently as last month, polls indicated it would be a close race between Wilders’ party and current Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. Wilders told Asscher that “the Netherlands is not for everyone, the Netherlands is for the Dutch”.

Wilders has vowed to shut mosques, ban the Quran and close the country’s borders. And Wilders is also really anti-Turkey. However, it will not be immediately clear which parties will form the coalition government as the discussion could take even months. Well, forget it. You are no Europeans, and you will never be.

However, Le Pen has her own legal troubles: she faces prosecution for distributing images of Islamic State atrocities over Twitter as well as separate cases over misusing public funds at the European Parliament and campaign financing.

But in opposition, Buma proved himself a good debater with an unexpected flair for humor and has played up the parts of the Christian Democrat platform that appeal to voters who defected to the PVV. So Turkey, stay away from us.

LANGFITT: Very, very divided.

Do you know your PVV from your VVD?

In a country, for instance, with a long tradition of religious tolerance, Wilders has asserted Islam is potentially more unsafe than Nazism; that the Quran is more anti-Semitic than Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and that it should be banned from book stores; and called mosques “Nazi temples”. I followed Wilders on the campaign trail yesterday and ran into a counter-protester.

Polls indicate that the anti-euro, anti-Islam PVV could score its best result since its creation in 2006.

SANNE ELISABETH: It’s divide and conquer. They want white people. We are all equal.

“This year is not only about the election in the Netherlands but elections in the whole of Europe”, Jesse Klaver, the candidate for the GreenLeft party, said Sunday.

LANGFITT: It’s going to be really closely watched. If Wilders wins, he’s unlikely to be prime minister.

But while the CDA presence in government would ensure a conservative stamp on any coalition, Buma said it endorses freedom of religion “and that’s a great difference”.

The election in the Netherlands comes ahead of polls in France and Germany, when right-wing nationalists will also be key players. Frank, thanks so much.

SINGH: That’s NPR’s Frank Langfitt.