ANKARA, April 24 -- Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag slammed Tuesday the Council of Europe over its move regarding the country's snap elections as "interference in Turkey's internal affairs."
The call of Council of Europe on Turkey to postpone its early elections amid its state of emergency shows a "double standard," as no one made an issue of the same situation in France, Bozdag said on his Twitter account.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Monitoring Committee on Tuesday called on Turkey to postpone the early elections, adding it should abide by the fundamental values of the Council of Europe.
The move came one week after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced to hold presidential and parliamentary snap vote on June 24, over one year ahead of the scheduled date, Nov. 3, 2019.
"When France held (2017) elections during the state of emergency, PACE didn't mind election security and didn't urge France to postpone the elections, but when it comes to Turkey, it brings up the EU criteria, state of emergency and election security, which is meaningful and shows a double standard," Bozdag noted.
"PACE should mind its own business. Turkey will hold the elections, not them," Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told a news conference in Spain's capital Madrid.
Omer Celik, Turkey's EU minister, also criticized the PACE move, calling it "a completely political decision," and "an intrusion in the sovereign decision of Turkish citizens".
"Turkey knows how to decide when the elections should be. Nobody has the right to intervene except Turkish people and the institutions that represent them," he tweeted on Tuesday.
Turkey declared a state of emergency for the first time on July 20, 2016 following a deadly coup attempt.
On Wednesday, the parliament ratified motions extending the ongoing state of emergency for the seventh time for three more months, meaning the upcoming early elections on June 24 will be held under the emergency rule.