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A diplomatic spat between Turkey and the Netherlands is evolving.
Source of the controversy: Turkey's upcoming referendum on a constitutional change which would give more powers to the president. President Recep Erdoğan has been clamping down on opposition ever since the attempted coup, and securing his reign. Changing the constitution is another step in this process, which is seen by some as a large step towards eradicating democracy.
The Netherlands comes into play as the Turkish ruling party (AK) wishes to campaign for a "yes" vote in other countries, such as Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. None of those countries is happy with an uninvited campaign visit by foreign politicians. The Turkish minister of foreign affairs was supposed to come to the Netherlands to campaign. The Dutch government strongly counselled against his visit, stating, amongst other reasons, that they do not want the Netherlands to host a rallying call for eradication of democracy. However, the rally could not be forbidden just because the contents was yuck to those in power - free speech and all that.
After this started hitting the news, the owners of the rooms that were booked for these rallies cancelled these bookings. Meanwhile, talks were ongoing between the two countries to resolve the situation. The Dutch government claims that the Turks started threatening with sanctions, and (my rephrasing) refused to be held hostage to how to govern their own country. In the midst of this evolving diplomatic spat, the Turkish minister of foreign affairs got onto a plane to the Netherlands.
As a side note: the Netherlands is having elections in 4 days (15th of March).
It gets better. The short short version:
- Saturday morning, the Dutch government cancelled the landing rights of the plane carrying the Turkish minister of foreign affairs.
- In response, Turkish president Erdogan called the Dutch nazis and fascists
- Turkish and Dutch communities were getting riled up.
This has created an atmosphere where any mayor can forbid a Turkish rally on the legitimate grounds that safety and security cannot be guaranteed. Yeah, that's not helping.
With the elections close, of course there's political posturing. Virtually all politicians think that this is a backwards step for Turkey, and that Turkish politicians should not be campaigning here.
But wait: it gets *even* better!
- Saturday evening, The Turkish minister of education snuck into the Netherlands by car.
- Her motorcade was stopped before arriving at the consulate, as the area around the Turkish consulate was now a no-go area thanks to the rising tensions
- There are calls on social media for Turks to travel to the consulate to protest.
- Turkey just announced that the Dutch ambassador to Turkey (who is not on his post currently) is not welcome back.
The ambassador not being welcome is literally breaking as I write this - I'm sure there will be more developments before this can be posted. See the live updates here.
My €0.02: Freedom of speech is important, even if you end up defending scoundrels (H.L. Mencken). However:
- every municipality has the right to forbid activities on its ground where it feels safety cannot be guaranteed.
- The Netherlands has elections in 4 days. Before today, the actions by the AK party were already decried as a gift to the anti-foreigners party. With current events evolving like this? I would expect quite a significant increase in seats for this party.
Update:
Turkey has just closed Dutch consulate and ambassy, and told the Dutch ambassador (out of country currently) he's not welcome back for now. The closing off is ostensibly for security purposes...
There is a massing of Turks near the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam. Police and various news media are there. Turkish media are getting good shots, others are broadcasting via periscope.
My updated two cents: foreign policy will become the hot topic for the Dutch elections; this is playing straight into the hands of the "Dutch Trump" Geert Wilders.
(and: why does the turkish government feel a need to force the issue now instead of after the Dutch elections? Are they so keen on playing the electoral role of the FBI?)
Read more at CNN and The Guardian.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @09:59AM (5 children)
Either Erdogan is a moron, which does not explain his clinging in top power positions, or he knew Netherlands had elections. He trolled them into accepting Wilders.
What to make out of it? well in Italy we had left and right apparently fighting each other for a century, then, like pokemon, a different party appears and they gang up together in the general indifference. The world politics is now going nationalists vs globalists, each implementing half of the real agenda. Have fun.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zocalo on Sunday March 12 2017, @10:16AM
Of course, that's not mutually exclusive from the other options, and the possibility that he's pushing the non-immigrant Dutch population to vote for Wilders is certainly something that might be of interest to Erdogan. It's pretty clear at this point he has no real interest in Turkey actually joining the EU, no matter what he says on the topic, and has in fact moved a lot closer to aligning with Russia since the bridge building in the wake of Turkey shooting down a Russian jet fighter. If you subscribe to certain theories, one might even suspect that Putin has been engineering this in order to further the breakup of the EU since that is exactly what most of the Right Wing candidates are promising to do. If the pattern holds, we'll see something similarly engineered in France designed to drive French voters towards Marine Le Pen in the next few weeks since the French elections are across April and May.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FakeBeldin on Sunday March 12 2017, @10:19AM (2 children)
Either Erdogan is a moron, which does not explain his clinging in top power positions, or he knew Netherlands had elections. He trolled them into accepting Wilders.
My guess is that this was a deliberate ploy. He also tried with Germany and Austria (where his minister-supporters were equally unwelcome), but I think he realised that with the Dutch elections looming so closely, NL was the perfect place to ensure escalation. And he wanted escalation, to say "look, it's us poor Turks being snubbed by mighty EU! We need to come together as a populace! Vote for me!".
It's a guess, but I cannot think of another reason why he'd force the confrontation now rather than wait a week. There is plenty of time to wait, but apparently forcing the confrontation now is more beneficial to him.
The likely side effect is that parties that will rage against immigrants will get a boost - which again plays into the above hypothetical narrative.
A really sucky aspect about this is that he's likely aware that he's playing into the hands of a few Dutch politicians - as likely as they are aware that their responses will help boost his agenda. It really feels like this was a well-timed diplomatic spat that was escalated to benefit a few parties, merely at the cost of affection elections in at least 2 countries. :(
(Score: 2) by mth on Sunday March 12 2017, @12:04PM (1 child)
I'm not sure this is going to benefit Wilders. All the major parties, left to right, spoke out against Turkish ministers campaigning here. And while Wilders likes to bash progressive party leaders, his main rival when it comes to votes is the party of the current prime minister (conservative liberals--yes that makes sense outside the USA), who got the opportunity to act tough in this spat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @10:51PM
Beware of assuming that the actual results were the intended results.
Its an easy mistake to make because humans are wired to look for easily identifiable cause->effect relationships.
But the real world is a lot more chaotic than that.
My opinion is that Wilders and Erdogan are spiritual allies - both drinking from the wellspring of illiberal populism.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by qzm on Monday March 13 2017, @01:04AM
The summary writer forgot to put 'attempted coup' in the required quotes.
There have been few 'coup' attempts for which the response was so well organise (almost, perhaps, pre-organised), the
list of coup organisers to be punished available so early, and so well aligned with the benefit of one single person (the great leader, of course).
Of course the powers that be in the world in general (that you USA, protectors of freedom) seem supporting of this, so the
view of the media is that Erdogan is the good guy. Sets see in ten years.