A slight diplomatic riot between Turkey and Netherlands has ensued after our prime minister commented in a talkshow on national television about a video fragment showing Turks harassing a national news cameraman, pushing his camera, and telling him stop reporting lies and fuck off, at a demonstration of pro-Erdogan Turks in the Hague.
The prime minister said "This makes me so angry. Fuck off yourself, to Turkey".
He stands with his statement even after the Turkish government protested. He says: "While 80% of Turks in the Netherlands , whom I will call Nether-Turks, are well integrated, and succesful members of our society, there are about 20% who stand with both legs outside of our society. I call those 'Turks in the Netherlands'.
For some reason those people seem to think that our society's acquired freedoms are some kind of cafetaria model. On the one hand, they gladly make use of our freedom of demonstration, but at the same time, they reject our freedom of press. That I cannot tolerate. Our freedoms are not 'pick and choose'. It's a complete package.
If you can't live with that, then yeah, you should leave."
Turkish Dutch relations haven't been very good of late, and this is just another escalation. Last week, our government demanded that Ankara stops polarizing Turks in the Netherlands, by means of our PM personally calling Erdogan on the phone. In response, the Turkish government published a list of companies in the Netherlands that have links to the Gülen terrorist organisation, further increasing tensions. A school in Amsterdam has seen 150 of it's 375 students leave to another school, and 9 of it's teachers cannot teach anymore because of death threats. They are sueing the pro-Erdogan parents now, who started a hype on social media against the school.
More locally, after my Turkish neighbohood tea house fixed it's broken window, it was trashed again the next day. I haven't seen any more cars being set on fire though, so I suppose that's good.
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Topic: Non-EU europe thread (with Russia, Israel and Australia included) (Read 272631 times)