GermanyNetherlandsproposalbarred the barbarian.
attacked I came across anarticle about a video of a group of men in Switzerland dressed as terrifying Ottoman Turkstone. But for me, this terrifying bogeyman seemed eerily familiar.
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right-wing politics I dont like murderers, but I dont like European politicians telling me I will be perceived as one of those nasty people if I act too Turkish. On the day I arrived in Amsterdam in 2004, a Dutch-Moroccan extremist had cut the throat of filmmaker near Oosterpark, a public park located a few hundred meters away from my apartment. I had had little idea then but I would have no other choice but to experience my new city under the shadow of that murder.
As my plane flew over the Rhine, I remembered that day November 2, 2004 when I headed out with my flatmate and a graduate student I had just met. There was outrage on the Amsterdam street a feeling equally intense to that produced by the assassination, in 2002, of a politician who heldsimilar to those of and.
In the liberal capital of Europe, Fortuyns assassination, the first in Dutch history in centuries, had sent shockwaves. The killing of van Gogh in 2004 rekindled that feeling with a fervor. That was understandable. When someone is assassinated in a park of your city, you are perfectly entitled to be outraged. But then again, ideology cunningly makes use of such feelings. And so it did in Amsterdam from my first day there.
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defeat The fact that Wilders party came in second shows its still a.
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That night, we had made our way to an avant garde bar. We were full of hopes and dreams. We talked about and wanted to explore minds as curious as ours I wanted to discover new views and face new ideas. Instead, I was lectured by a group of old local hippies at the bar about the beauty of freedom in Europe. Learning that I was coming from Turkey, they instructed me to tell my Muslim countrymen about the importance of Enlightenment.
Oh, the Enlightenment, that sacred word! The idea that destroying Islam from the face of the earth was a necessary condition of our liberation was almost laughable. Gradually, I was realizing how coming from a Muslim country was equal in this land to having the potential to become a barbarian.
Kaya at a cafe in Amsterdam in 2004. Politics is theater, and whilst talking about books in Britain, I had almost missed the biggest play on offer, I realized as the plane flew over Europe: Turkeys foreign minister had been in the Netherlands, the Turkish minister of families outside the door in the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam before reportedly being forced to spend about in her car, and others.
This reminded me of how the Turk is a crucial character in the European psyche. While in Britain on my most recent trip, a localgentleman The Turk is a crucial character in the European psyche ... the darkest fear of the European. Reading about how a Dutch mayor hed given special forces the go ahead to open fire on the Turkish crowd in Rotterdam if they found it necessary and the protests in Istanbul where someone the Dutch flag at the consulate with the Turkish one, I was initially reminded of the protest culture in my homeland or rather its violent suppression by the Turkish state.
This was, after all, precisely the kind of the Turkish police force had towards protesters at Gezi Park in Istanbul during 2013s environmentalist uprising. Young activists were, and fear and anxiety had dominated the public space. The authorities acted cowardly, as they often do, and young people were understandably furious. Officials ruthlessly of young people whose ideals they failed to burn they live on.
People watching Turkey back then might have pointed at the violence in Gezi as yet another reason to brand us barbarians. But just as it wasnt fair to label me with this term back in 2004 as a student looking to get an education in the Netherlands, this label isnt fair here either.
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Orhan PamukNuri Bilge CeylanDeniz TortumDeniz Gamze ErgvenGaye Su Akyol Despite Geert Wilders defeat, I fear that the genie put out of the bottle by right-wing European politicians will continue haunting the continent. As my plane started descending on Istanbul, I had the distinct memory of an Amsterdam coffeehouse by a canal that I used to frequent as a 23-year-old. With a cigarette in my hand, I would reflect on the kind of nationalism brewing in my homeland and believed, naively, that the laid-back streets of this city could provide an antidote, and a solution, to all that.
Despite Wilders defeat, I fear that the genie put out of the bottle by right-wing European politicians will continue haunting the continent.
It was raining at Atatrk Airport when I touched ground, and the night seemed grim.
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