(AFP) Turkey on Saturday cancelled a visit by the Swedish defence minister over a demonstration by an anti-Islamic extremist in Stockholm, sparking a fresh crisis as Sweden tries to convince Ankara not to block its bid to join the NATO military alliance.
Turkish officials denounced the permission granted to Rasmus Paludan, a right-wing Swedish-Danish politician, to stage a protest Saturday in front of its embassy in the Swedish capital.
After a diatribe of almost an hour in which he attacked Islam and immigration in Sweden, Paludan set fire to the Koran with a lighter.
“If you don’t think there should be freedom of expression, you have to live somewhere else,” he told the crowd.
