Türkiye to never yield to provocations or threats amid Quran burnings, says Erdogan

Türkiye will never yield to provocations or threats, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday, a day after a copy of the Muslim holy book the Quran was burned in Sweden.

“We will eventually teach Western monuments of arrogance that insulting Muslims is not freedom of thought,” Erdogan told members of the Justice and Development (AK) Party via a video message.

Türkiye will “show our reaction in the strongest way until a determined fight against terrorist organizations and enemies of Islam is carried out,” he added.

“As much as those who commit this crime, those who allow it under the guise of freedom of thought, those who turn a blind eye to this baseness will not achieve their goals,” the president said.

On Wednesday, an Iraqi national burned a copy of the Muslim holy book, the Quran, outside a mosque in the Swedish capital of Stockholm.

On June 12, a Swedish appeals court upheld a lower court's decision to overturn a ban on Quran burning, ruling that police had no legal grounds to prevent two Quran burning protests earlier this year.

In February, police refused permission for two Quran burning attempts, citing security concerns, after far-right Danish politician Rasmus Paludan burned a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm in January.

Later, two individuals who attempted to stage provocative actions outside the Iraqi and Turkish embassies in Stockholm appealed the decision.

In April, the Stockholm Administrative Court reversed the decision, ruling that security risks were insufficient to restrict the ability to demonstrate.