Erdogan’s perpetual quest for an enemy

Over the weekend, a crisis erupted between Turkey and the Netherlands after Dutch authorities refused to allow Turkish ministers to address a rally in Rotterdam in which the ministers were going to urge expatriate Turks to vote to approve a new constitution in Turkey’s April 16 referendum. Apparently because of permitting issues, Dutch authorities did not allow the Turkish ministers to address the rally, a slight which Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan escalated sharply: crowds held anti-Dutch rallies in front of Dutch diplomatic buildings, someone hoisted a Turkish flag over the Dutch consulate in Istanbul, Erdogan’s government made clear they are not ready to have the Dutch ambassador —who was outside Turkey at the time — return to Ankara, and now Erdogan has demanded the Dutch present him with a written apology. Erdogan went further and suggested the Netherlands to be akin to Nazi Germany, a curious comparison given Turkey’s recent ethnic cleansing campaign, its crackdown on the press, and its mass imprisonment of civil society leaders and journalists. Most ironic, however, is the fact that Erdogan is targeting the Netherlands—a country which has repeatedly shown itself willing to silence critics of political Islam in the name of communal harmony.

 
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Erdogan’s perpetual quest for an enemy

Πηγή: American Enterprise Institute