Turkey accuses Greek minister of holding racist views

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has issued a strongly-worded communique accusing Greek Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos of "racist provocations" that are threatening the "foundations of European tranquillity" , following a statement the minister made in Athens on Friday.

Pangalos called on the European Union to take a harder stand against Ankara because of what he described as the " Kurdish genocide" perpetuated by Turkey.

Turkish TV on Saturday quoted a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement describing the Pangalos's accusations "as nonsense befitting its speaker" .

"The present extension of Greek fascism and racism is once again dragging his country into adventures," the statement continued.

"Through his racist provocations Mr Pangalos is torpedoing the foundations of European tranquillity and the domestic peace of certain Middle Eastern countries that are Turkey's neighbours.

Greece is entering an adventure by pursuing Mr Pangalos, the pied piper." "The Greek minister has escalated Turkish enmity to the level of racist provocations and identification with terrorists .

Based on racist criteria, Minister Pangalos is supposedly categorizing not only our citizens in Turkey but the people of many Middle Eastern countries and provoking them to embark on separatist and divisionist adventures.

Minister Pangalos's behaviour befits him because the country which he represents carries fascism and racism as a dark stain in its history." Ankara branded Pangalos as being similar to "Greek fascists" of the Nazi era, and pointed to the role Athens played in the Jewish Holocaust.

"Greek fascists similar to Minister Pangalos personally handed over thousands of Jews to the German occupationists which they considered to be their masters and sent them to death camps.

Through his statement that Greece is the only country that did not collaborate with the German authorities, Minister Pangalos has once again avoided the truth.

We advise him to visit the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, read what is written there in connection with Greece, and view the pictures of Greek fascists who handed over 53,000 Greek Jews to the Nazis and who put them on trains to be transported to death camps," the statement said.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.