A member of Drenthe’s provincial council for the anti-immigration PVV has resigned because he is ’embarrassed’ about the party’s national policies, Nos television reported on Wednesday.

‘The last straw was the way [party leader] Geert Wilders tore a strip off the president of Turkey,’ Frans van Rhee is quoted as saying.
Wilders used the microblogging service Twitter to call the Turkish president Abdullah Gül a ‘Christian-teaser, kurd-basher and Hamas friend’. Wilders is opposed to the current state visit by Gül and his wife to celebrate 400 years of diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and Turkey.
Van Rhee said he will retain his seat in the provincial council as an independent.
Two PVV regional councillors in Limburg have also defied the party line by agreeing to attend a lunch held in honour of Gül when he is in the province on Thursday.