Brussels NatCon mayor was barred by socialists for meeting far-Right Turks
The mayor who tried to shut down the NatCon conference in Brussels was a socialist who was kicked out of this party after he met with two far-Right counterparts from Turkey.
Emir Kir, a little known mayor of the relatively run-down Brussels neighbourhood of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, rose to international notoriety on Tuesday after he signed a legal order to close the Right-wing event being hosted in his district.
His move, which prompted police to blockade the venue hosting speakers such as Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman, was later overturned by Belgium’s highest civil court.
But ahead of elections in Belgium in June, it meant that his name was plastered over the front pages of newspapers from London to Washington.
Mr Kir, 55, has been the mayor of Saint Josse, for more than 11 years, appealing to the neighbourhood’s Turkish voters.
He is the son of Turkish immigrants who came to work in the Belgian mines in the 1960s. When elected in December 2012, he became Belgium’s first mayor of non-European origin.
Six years later, he was hauled in front of the vigilance committee of the Brussels Socialist Party, which he was representing at the time.
Mr Kir was forced to explain why he had met with a delegation of six Turkish mayors, two of whom represented MHP, a nationalist party with close ties to far-Right organisation Grey Wolves.
He was deemed to have broken a “cordon sanitaire”, which protects Belgian politics from the hard-Right.
Mehmet Sari, one of the Turkish officials, lauded the meeting in Brussels, raising a particular focus on Mr Kir.
The Saint Josse mayor tried to brush it off as a meeting organised through a politically-neutral association of Turkish cities.
But this excuse didn’t wash, and he was ejected from the socialists.
Despite being elected to represent Belgians, Mr Kir has often drawn controversy for his pro-Turkish viewpoints.
Armenian Genocide
He has faced accusations of denying the Armenian Genocide, which led to the deaths of thousands when Ottoman Turks deported Armenians from eastern Anatolia during the First World War.
Mr Kir did not attend a minute of silence in respect of the victims held at Brussels’ regional parliament ahead of a debate on the subject.
On Tuesday, he followed two other local mayors in the Belgian capital, who had succeeded in pressuring venues in their neighbourhoods to not host NatCon.
The owner of Claridge was not deterred by Mr Kir’s attempts to do the same.
The mayor had ordered the closure of the event on public safety grounds, something he is responsible for.
Belgium’s highest court eventually ruled that this was not legal because it aimed to stifle free speech, as guaranteed under the country’s constitution.
