Last year, Islamic State militants seized 49 Turkish hostages from Turkey's consulate in Mosul and held them for more than three months before releasing the group. Those hostages included diplomats, soldiers and children.
Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister whose People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) is slightly ahead of the PVV, has seen his poll numbers rise in recent days because of his hardline stance with Ankara. On Tuesday he called Mr Erdogan’s comments “a disgusting distortion of history”, adding: “We will not lower ourselves to this level. It is totally unacceptable.”
We are now in the midst of the most peaceful era of human history. Back in the 1940s, 300 out of every 100,000 people would die as a direct result of war. We’re happy to tell you that that figure is now less than 1.