President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan warned of action if Western consulates remain shut after a series of closures in Istanbul due to cited security concerns.
"Recently, our Foreign Ministry summoned them and gave them an ultimatum. It said that if they continue such actions, they will pay a heavy price," Erdoğan said during a meeting with youth that was pre-recorded and broadcast on Sunday.
Ankara summoned the ambassadors of nine countries on Thursday to criticize their decisions to shut diplomatic missions and issue security alerts temporarily. Turkish officials said that Western nations, including the United States and Germany, had not shared information to back up their claims of a security threat.
Alongside the closures, several Western states warned citizens of a heightened risk of attacks on diplomatic missions and non-Muslim places of worship in Türkiye following a series of European protests in recent weeks that included several incidents of burning copies of Islam's holy book, the Quran.
Erdoğan said that the Western states were "playing for (more) time" and that the "necessary decisions" would be taken during Monday's Cabinet meeting without elaborating.
Earlier, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu had called the move "deliberate" and said the countries concerned were not sharing factual information or documents with Ankara.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, police said they had not found evidence of any concrete threat to foreigners in the detentions of 15 Daesh suspects accused of targeting consulates and non-Muslim houses.
Istanbul police said the suspects had "received instructions for acts targeting consulates of Sweden and the Netherlands, as well as Christian and Jewish places of worship."
While the suspects' ties to Daesh were confirmed, the statement said no concrete threats toward foreigners were found.
Highlighting the importance of Türkiye's forthcoming elections, Erdoğan said: "Everyone, including the international media, is writing how important the elections are for our country, the nation, and global politics."
Criticizing global powers for making efforts to influence the vote, expected on May 14, in a way that suits them, Erdoğan said: "That is why despicable campaigns are being launched against me. This is the purpose of burning our holy book Quran, supported under the guise of freedom of expression."
He said a perception of insecurity is being created, the purpose of which is to target our tourism sector, he said.
Rasmus Paludan, an extremist Swedish-Danish politician, burned a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm on Jan. 21, with both police protection and permission from Swedish authorities.
The following week, he burned a copy of Islam's holy book in front of a mosque in Denmark and said he would repeat the act every Friday until Sweden was included in NATO.
Allowing anti-Türkiye and anti-Islam provocations in Sweden caused Türkiye to reconsider ratification of Stockholm’s membership into NATO.
