Inhabitants of the Austrian town Wiener Neustadt are being told not to display Turkish flags in windows and on balconies, local media report.
The town’s mayor, Klaus Schneeberger, wrote in a letter to council estates and Turkish communities that they needed to “immediately” take down the flags because “Turkish domestic issues” should not be imported into the city.
Schneeberger said that his town, 60 kilometers from Vienna, was very “open and tolerant” but stressed that integration also means a commitment to the city and that its values “need to be respected.”
“I therefore call on all those who have put up Turkish flags on their homes or balconies to remove them at once,” he wrote, in a letter following the failed coup against Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on July 15.
About a fifthof Wiener Neustadt’s 40.000 inhabitants are migrants.
The Deputy-Major on Friday said that the majority of the flags had been removed. He asked the housing administration to get in touch with tenants to explain them that the display of flags is not in accordance with the housing rules.