Turkish Forum English

Category: The Netherlands

  • Dutch Justice Ministry employee: ISIS a Zionist conspiracy

    Dutch Justice Ministry employee: ISIS a Zionist conspiracy

    THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — A senior employee of the Dutch Justice Ministry said the jihadist group ISIS was created by Zionists seeking to give Islam a bad reputation.

    Yasmina Haifi, a project leader at the ministry’s National Cyber Security Center, made the assertion Wednesday on Twitter, the De Telegraaf daily reported.

    “ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It’s part of a plan by Zionists who are deliberately trying to blacken Islam’s name,” wrote Haifi, who described herself on the social network LinkedIn as an activist for the Dutch Labor Party, or PvdA.

    Haifi later removed her original message, explaining, “I realize the political sensitivity in connection with my work. That was not my intention.”

    jtaTwo right-wing lawmakers, Joram van Klaveren and Louis Bontes of the VNL faction, asked the ministry how one with such views reached a prominent position in the ministry and if Haifi’s employment constituted a security risk.

    A series of rallies supporting ISIS, which is considered a terrorist organization in many Western countries, were held in the Hague in July and earlier this month. Some demonstrators called for violence. The demonstrations on July 2 and 24 featured calls to kill Jews.

    When anti-ISIS demonstrators tried to march through the heavily Muslim neighborhood of Schilderswijk on Aug. 10 to express their disapproval, a crowd of approximately 200 men barricaded the main street and staged an illegal counter demonstration in support of ISIS.

    Some of the protesters hurled stones at police who tried to remove the obstacles. Six people were arrested

    www.jta.org, August 13, 2014

  • Caribbean states demand reparations from European powers for slave trade

    Caribbean states demand reparations from European powers for slave trade

    Most of the Caribbean nations have adopted a single plan to solicit from former slaving nations an apology, more aid and damages for 300 years of slavery, which they say have hobbled their economies and public health

    slavery
    Sugar Plantation Slaves 1858 engraving of slaves in the British West Indies working the sugar cane Photo: Lordprice Collection/ Alamy

    By Philip Sherwell, New York

    A coalition of Caribbean countries has unveiled its demands for reparations from Britain and other European nations for the enduring legacy of the slave trade.

    The leaders of 15 states adopted a wide-ranging plan, including seeking a formal apology from former colonial powers, debt cancellation, greater development aid as well as unspecified financial damages for the persisting “psychological trauma” from the days of plantation slavery.

    The series of demands to be made of former slaving nations such as Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and The Netherlands were agreed at a closed-door meeting of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

    The Atlantic slave trade took place from the 16th through to the 19th centuries.

    The group hired Leigh Day, the British law firm, to push their claims after the company secured a £20 million compensation award for Kenyans who were tortured by colonial authorities during the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s.

    The reparations debate has long simmered in the Caribbean where many blame slavery for modern ills, ranging from economic weakness to health epidemics such as diabetes and hyper-tension allegedly caused by their ancestors’ poor diets.

    Caricom is pushing for increased technological assistance as it says European powers shackled the region during the world’s industrialisation by confining it to producing and exporting raw materials such as sugar.

    The plan also demands an increase of aid for public health and educational and cultural institutions such as museums and research centres.

    And it calls for the creation of a “repatriation programmes” to help resettle members of the Rastafarian movement in Africa. Repatriation to Africa has long been a central belief of Rastafarians.

    Martin Day, of Leigh Day, said he would request a meeting with European officials to seek a negotiated settlement, but would pursue a legal complaint if Caribbean nations are not satisfied with the outcome of any talks.

    It has been 180 years since Britain abolished slavery but the demand for an unqualified apology remains as controversial as the calls for financial damages.

    In 2007, Tony Blair, the then prime minister, expressed “deep sorrow and regret” for the “unbearable suffering” caused by Britain’s role in slavery but stopped short of a formal apology. His words angered many in the Caribbean as inadequate and resonating of legal caution.

    The British government, which currently contributes about £15million a year in development to the Caribbean, said that it has not been presented with the demands, but has consistently signalled opposition to financial reparations.

    “The UK has been clear that we deplore the human suffering caused by slavery and the slave trade,” a Foreign Office spokesman said. “However we do not see reparations as the answer. Instead, we should concentrate on identifying ways forward with a focus on the shared global challenges that face our countries in the twenty-first century.”

    But Professor Verene Shepherd, the chairman of Jamaica’s reparations committee, told The Daily Telegraph last month that British colonisers had “disfigured the Caribbean”, and that their descendants should now pay to repair the damage.

    “If you commit a crime against humanity, you are bound to make amends,” she said. “The planters were given compensation, but not one cent went to the freed Jamaicans”.

    The Caricom nations highlighted the region’s enduring troubles as well the suffering of the victims of the trade in humanity and the profits made by the slaving powers.

    “The transatlantic slave trade is the largest forced migration in human history and has no parallel in terms of man’s inhumanity to man,” their claim reads. “This trade in enchained bodies was a highly successful commercial business for the nations of Europe.”

    www.telegraph.co.uk, 11 Mar 2014

  • Sentencing of Turkish pianist marks new low

    Sentencing of Turkish pianist marks new low

    MEP: Sentencing of Turkish pianist marks new low

    16.04.2013Posted in: Foreign Affairs, human rights, Policy Map, Timeline, Top Stories, Turkey

    Schaake1Dutch Member of European Parliament Marietje Schaake (D66/ALDE) is concerned about the sentencing of the well known Turkish pianist Fazil Say. A Turkish court sentenced Say to a suspended 10 months in jail for posting tweets in which he criticised religion and declared himself an atheist. Schaake is a long time critic of the on going erosion of the rule of law in Turkey that tramples fundamental rights. “This is only the last example in a series of sentences following criticism on religion or politics, while the statements are legal according to universal human rights and European law. The growing number of convictions leads to fear among journalists and artists and spurs self-censorship. This is a major problem and hampers the democratic reforms that Turkey so badly needs”, Schaake says.

    Statement
    The European Commission released a statement today saying Turkey has to respect freedom of expression, as enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Turkey is a party. Schaake: “The deterioration of freedom of expression is a growing problem. As the government is becoming more authoritarian, and the Turkish judiciary threatens to lose its independence. The EU should draw its consequences if the Turkish government does not show though actions it is committed to substantial democratic and judicial reforms.”

    Accession process
    Schaake wants the EU to put freedom of expression at the heart of Turkey’s accession process. “The fact that Turkey is an important ally for the EU in facing shared challenges in the Middle East should not overshadow Turkey’s domestic human rights problems. When EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton recently visited Turkey she did not address these very real problems during the official press conference while these issues should be directly addressed with the Turkish government”, Schaake adds.

    Progress report
    This week the European Parliament will vote on its annual report assessing Turkey’s progress towards EU accession. Through several amendments Schaake pleads for respect for freedoms such as freedom of expression and digital freedoms as well as the rule of law in Turkey.

    ——

    For more information:

    Marietje Schaake 0031 6 3037 7921

    or her press officer Anna Sophia Posthumus 0032 484 201 518

  • Turkish child fostered by Dutch lesbians sparks diplomatic row

    Turkish child fostered by Dutch lesbians sparks diplomatic row

    AD20130331423730-Turks_demonstra

    Turks demonstrate against the Dutch youth care policy in Lelystad on March 22. A diplomatic row over a Turkish boy fostered by Dutch lesbian parents clouded the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to the Netherlands this month. Evert Ezlinga / AFP.

    Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/europe/turkish-child-fostered-by-dutch-lesbians-sparks-diplomatic-row#ixzz2P6cUzbe0
    Follow us: @TheNationalUAE on Twitter | thenational.ae on Facebook

    ISTANBUL // A nine-year-old boy in the Netherlands is at the centre of a row between Turkey and European countries over non-Muslims fostering Muslim children and eroding their “moral values and religious beliefs”.

    Yunus, a Dutch citizen of Turkish origin, was removed from his Turkish parents as a four-month-old by Dutch authorities over suspicions of child abuse and neglect. He was given to lesbian foster parents who have raised him ever since.

    Several court rulings have confirmed that Yunus’s biological parents were unfit to care for him, a Dutch official said last week. He said the boy had not been adopted by his foster parents.

    The case has become the focal point of a campaign by the Turkish government to prevent Muslim children of Turkish families in European countries from being raised by non-Muslim or homosexual foster parents.

    “If a child is given to a homosexual family, then this runs counter to general moral values and religious beliefs of [Turkish] society,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a visit to the Netherlands this month.

    At the core of the row lies Ankara’s view that the about four million Turkish citizens and people of Turkish descent in European countries are exposed to threats to their cultural or religious identity – and that Turkey has the right, and the duty, to act.

    Mr Erdogan suggested that cooperation between the Turkish and Dutch governments could prevent similar problems in the future and said Turkish non-government organisations in the Netherlands could also help.

    Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, dismissed the idea of any Turkish intervention, saying the case was a domestic issue.

    Mr Erdogan’s government regards itself as responsible for the welfare of Turks abroad, even if they have foreign passports. But this clashes with Europeans’ view of their sovereignty and ideas of integration, as well as with the continent’s more liberal values.

    Bekir Bozdag, a Turkish deputy prime minister who oversees Turkish expatriates, told parliament late last year that there were about 4,000 cases of children who had been forcibly taken away from Muslim-Turkish families in Europe and given to non-Muslim foster parents.

    He suggested that religious reasons were behind the trend, but offered no proof to back up the accusation.

    “These children are really Christianised,” Mr Bozdag said. “We are faced with a big tragedy.”

    Mr Bozdag called on European countries to have Turkish children raised by Turkish families if possible and promised that his government would do everything to “save our little ones”.

    Faruk Sen, chairman of the German-Turkish Foundation for Education and Scientific Research and an expert on the Turkish community in western Europe, said the Turkish government was partly to blame.

    “There are 700,000 Turkish families in Germany, but not enough come forward to take children” as foster families, Mr Sen said last week. He said Turkey’s diplomatic missions in Europe had failed to provide authorities with lists of potential Turkish foster parents.

    Referring to local, parliamentary and presidential elections coming up next year and in 2015, Mr Sen said efforts to please the conservative voter base of the Erdogan government were also shaping Ankara’s position on the issue. “They want to tell voters at home: ‘I am making sure that no Muslim child is raised by a Christian family’.”

    A lack of Muslim foster families had also been an issue in the case of Yunus in the Netherlands, the Dutch official said.

    “He was initially placed in a foster home and given to the couple after a while,” the official said. He also said that the biological parents of the boy had tried and failed to get Yunus back through the courts.

    As the case became public, the lesbian couple in the Netherlands went into hiding with Yunus. Dutch officials said there had been no specific threats, but the move to “another address” had been organised as a precaution.

    The Turkish family has turned to the Turkish government for help. Following Mr Erdogan’s visit to the Netherlands, Nurgul Azeroglu, Yunus’s biological mother, praised the stance taken by Ankara.

    “Our prime minister’s statement took a weight off my mind,” she told the Turkish Cihan news agency. “Now I have new hope that I can embrace Yunus again after nine years.”

    Ms Azeroglu appeared on Turkish television this month and called on Mr Erdogan to intervene in the case. She said she accidentally dropped the child from a poorly fastened carrying bag once – part of the reason he was removed from her care.

    Dutch news reports said the authorities in the Netherlands decided in 2008 to remove two of Yunus’s siblings from the Azeroglu family and place them in the same family with the boy, but that the children had been sent to Turkey by their family before the decision was implemented.

    * With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press
    Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/europe/turkish-child-fostered-by-dutch-lesbians-sparks-diplomatic-row#ixzz2P6d85Sor
    Follow us: @TheNationalUAE on Twitter | thenational.ae on Facebook

  • Dutch deputy PM hits back at Turkey in adoption row

    Dutch deputy PM hits back at Turkey in adoption row

    The Netherlands hit back at Turkey Friday over a bid to return a boy adopted by Dutch lesbians to his Turkish mother, with the row threatening to overshadow a visit by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan next week.

    “I find it presumptuous of a foreign power, whoever it might be, to have such a viewpoint, based on the views or religion of the adoptive parents,” Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Asscher told journalists after a cabinet meeting.

    Dutch media reported Friday that the lesbian parents of the nine-year-old boy known as “Yunus” have gone into hiding after attempts by Turkey to have him reunited with his biological mother.

    Turkey has embarked on a campaign to retrieve children of Turkish immigrant families living in Europe who are fostered by foreigners, and instead place them in homes where their cultural identity can be preserved.

    Turkey’s Islamist-rooted government fears that children placed in Christian homes will forget their roots, and also disapproves of placements with gay couples.

    Yunus, who is a Dutch citizen, was adopted by the Hague-based couple when he was a baby, but his biological mother told Dutch public broadcaster NOS that she wanted him back.

    “I’m sad because my child is now with a family that has a totally different culture that does not relate to ours,” the unidentified mother said.

    “How would you feel if your child lived with lesbians?” she said.

    Ayhan Ustun, who chairs the Turkish parliament’s Human Rights Research Commission, confirmed to the NOS it had taken up the case. He added that Turkey had every justification to get involved in adoption cases in Western countries.

    “The people we are talking about are our citizens and our race. It would be wrong of a country not to speak about its citizens,” he said.

    Asscher said Dutch authorities adhered to strict adoption criteria, saying the child’s best interests were always being taken into account.

    “Selection is not done based on race or religion. It doesn’t fit the Netherlands and the values we have,” he said.

    “It is absolutely improper to allege that the youngster was being mistreated,” he added.

    He said Dutch Premier Mark Rutte would discuss the issue with his Turkish counterpart Erdogan, due in the Netherlands on Thursday for a one-day official visit.

    “I am convinced the Turkish authorities will be completely put at ease after the talks have ended,” he said.

    Diplomatic ties between the Netherlands and Turkey stretch back more than 400 years, and there are around 393,000 Dutch citizens of Turkish descent in the Netherlands.

    jhe/cjo/jhb

  • Turkey Patriots will cost the country $8.5mln a year

    Turkey Patriots will cost the country $8.5mln a year

    Askerlerin maaşını da Türkiye ödüyor, daha hala da gelmeye naz ediyorlar!

    Dutch Army Patriot defense missile system at an airbase in Adana

    The Turkish media have quoted the Defence Ministry as saying that hosting the six Patriot anti-aircraft missile batteries sent to southeastern Turkey by NATO will cost the country $8.5mln a year.

    Two of the batteries are from the US, two, from Germany, and two, from the Netherlands. They are supposed to protect Turkey against an air attack from across the country’s border with Syria.

    In a series of incidents last autumn, artillery shells fired from Syrian territory killed 5 people in a village in southeastern Turkey.

    Voice of Russia, RIA

    via Turkey Patriots will cost the country $8.5mln a year: Voice of Russia.