Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday warned the Netherlands would pay for blocking his ministers from holding rallies to win support in a referendum on expanding his powers, as a crisis escalated with Turkey's key EU partners, the AFP reported.
 
Erdogan also repeated hugely controversial accusations that the Netherlands -- occupied by Nazi Germany in World War II -- was behaving like fascists in its treatment of Turkish ministers.
 
Analysts are predicting a tight outcome to the April 16 referendum on a new constitution and Turkish ministers have planned major rallies in key EU cities to win votes from millions of Turks residing abroad.
 
But Turkey's Family Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya was expelled after being prevented from addressing a rally in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam.
 
Also this weekend, The Hague refused to allow Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu's plane to land ahead of a planned rally.
 
"Hey Holland! If you are sacrificing Turkish-Dutch relations for the sake of the elections on Wednesday, you will pay a price," an angry Erdogan told a ceremony in Istanbul, referring to the March 15 election in Turkey's NATO ally.
"They will learn what diplomacy is," he growled, adding that what happened "cannot remain unanswered."
 
"If you let horses, dogs on my citizens you have to be held to account," he said, referring to dogs, horses and water cannons used by Dutch police to disperse pro-Erdogan demonstrators after clashes in Rotterdam early Sunday.
 
But Dutch Prime Prime Minister Mark Rutte ruled out apologizing, saying: "There's absolutely no way excuses can be made, they should make excuses for what they've done yesterday."
 
Erdogan repeated his accusations that the Dutch response to the Turkish visits was "Nazism, fascism".
 
Speaking at a rally in the French city of Metz -- which was allowed to go ahead -- Cavusoglu described the Netherlands as the "capital of fascism".