Ankara Says West Waging 'Psychological War' Against Turkey by Closing Istanbul Consulates

ANKARA, February 2 (Sputnik) - The United States and other Western countries are waging a "psychological war" against Turkey by closing their consulates in Istanbul amid US warnings about possible terrorist attacks there, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said on Thursday.

On Monday, the US Embassy in Turkey warned about possible terrorist attacks in the center of Istanbul after recent cases of Quran desecration in Europe. The Consulate General of the Netherlands in Istanbul switched to working online due to a potential terrorist threat. On Wednesday, the consulates of the United Kingdom and Germany in the Turkish city followed suit and stopped receiving visitors.

"The US and the West do not want us to be independent and free in this region. Just as we set the goal of attracting 60 million tourists, they have started a new psychological war against Turkey," Soylu said.

The minister added that Turkey's fight against terrorism was not over yet, though this issue was "no longer top on the agenda."

"We know who feeds terrorist organizations. It is the US that feeds the PKK [the Kurdistan Workers' Party, banned in Turkey]. The US and the West that have been providing money, logistics, human resources to them have not abandoned the dream of creating a terrorist country," Soylu stated.

Earlier in January, Rasmus Paludan, the leader of the far-right Danish political party Stram Kurs, burned copies of the Quran in Sweden and Denmark in a protest against the Turkish leadership. A similar protest was carried out by far-right Dutch politician and leader of the Islamophobic group Pegida Edwin Wagensveld in the Netherlands, when he tore out pages from a copy of the Muslim holy book and burned them in front of the parliamentary building in The Hague.