A visit to Turkey by an all-party group of MPs has been cancelled because of the reluctance of the Turkish authorities to meet anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders, the Volkskrant reports on Thursday.

‘The delegation takes the view it is for parliament to decide who should be in the delegation,’ the parliamentary European affairs commission said in a statement. ‘The heart has been taken out of our working visit,’ commission chairman Harm Waalkens said.
The trip, set for January, was to have been a fact-finding mission in connection with Turkey’s efforts to join the EU. Last month it emerged there is opposition to Wilder’s presence and a spokesman for the foreign affairs ministry said he would not be welcome.

Opposition

Wilders said earlier he planned to use the visit to Turkey to explain why he is totally opposed to Turkish membership of the EU.
In an article in the Volkskrant in October Wilders said no Muslim country should be a member of the EU. Any ‘more importation of that backward Islamic culture is undesirable,’ he wrote. ‘Western civilisation is so much better than a society based on Islamic imperialism and barbarism.’
Wilders said on Thursday it is ‘a real shame’ he would not be able to debate with the Turkish government. ‘It shows they cannot deal wi th criticism and critics. It’s a totalitarian, cowardly regime and will not be a member of the EU in a hundred million years,’ the Volkskrant quoted him as saying.

Weakness
But Socialist MP Harry Bommel said there are enough other academics and politicans who are willing to speak to the Dutch MPs. ‘This is a sign of weakness from parliament,’ he was quoted as saying by the Volkskrant.
He pointed out that only a spokesman for the foreign affairs ministry had reacted to Wilders’ inclusion and a refusal to meet him was not an official government position.
A spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry told the Volkskrant: ‘The most important thing is that we have a good relationship with the Netherlands. We have nothing against Wilders. We are only opposed to his ideas.’