Rotterdam’s mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb has appealed to the Turkish community in the Netherlands ‘to stay calm’ following Friday night’s failed military coup.
The Telegraaf reported that windows had been smashed at cultural centres in Rotterdam and Zaandam, and that supporters of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan were circulating ‘boycott lists’ of Turkish businesses in Amsterdam that were critical of the president.
‘What has happened in Turkey is already bad enough,’ the paper quoted Aboutaleb as saying. There are some 500,000 people of Turkish origin in the Netherlands.
Mehmet Cerit, editor in chief of Dutch Turkish newspaper Zaman Vandaag told the NRC the failed coup will only lead to a further deterioration in the relationship between different Turkish communities in the Netherlands.
‘It is very worrying’, said Ahmet Taskan, co-founder of a Dutch-Turkish business association and a prominent supporter of Muslim cleric Fetullah Gulen, who has denied any involvement in the coup.
Several hundred Dutch Turks held spontaneous demonstrations in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Eindhoven on Saturday to celebrate the failure of the coup, in response to Erdogan’s call to his supporters to go out onto the streets.