DUTCH Prime Minister Mark Rutte clashed with his main rival anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders on Monday, as they laid out starkly opposing visions of their country’s future in an election campaign now consumed by a diplomatic row with Turkey.

    Two days before today’s crucial general election, the Netherlands is mired in a war of words with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which has provided fodder for Wilders and his uncompromising anti-immigration stance.

    “You are being taken hostage by Erdogan. Close the Dutch borders,” Wilders told Rutte, as tempers flared in the 30-minute head-to-head televised debate.

    “That’s a totally fake solution,” Rutte shot back, “you want Nexit, you want the Netherlands out of Europe. You know what it will cost ... don’t do it.”

    Wilders, who says he is on a mission against the “Islamization” of the country, has promised to shut Dutch borders to Muslim immigrants, close mosques and ban sales of the Koran.

    He also wants to follow the British and pull the country out of the European Union which it helped found.

    Polls suggest today’s results could be close, with Rutte’s Liberal VVD returning as the largest party in the 150-seat parliament by a whisker.

    The elections are being closely watched as a signal of the possible rise of far-right and populist parties in Europe, with key elections also planned this year in France and Germany.

    “I want the Netherlands to be the first country which stops this trend of the wrong sort of populism,” Rutte told reporters.

    Wilders has delighted in the chaos which erupted over the weekend when riot police moved in to disperse hundreds of protesters waving Turkish flags in Rotterdam, angered by a Dutch government ban on their ministers.  (SD-Agencies)