Most Dutch newspaper editors have left it to their columnists to comment on the arrest in Turkey of  Dutch-Turkish fellow-columnist Ebru Umar, allegedly for tweeting insults about Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Umar is presently barred from leaving the country.

The Parool considered the matter important enough to open Monday’s front page with an analysis by Ronald Ockhuysen. The Dutch government’s reaction to the arrest was ‘smothered in diplomacy’, he wrote. There were no ‘harsh words’ for the Turkish regime although ‘Umar’s arrest is proof positive that Turkish brutality knows no bounds. This show of despising democratic ground rules is Erdogan profiting from his new position,’ Ockhuysen said.

Umar’s style – ‘she is a columnist who foams at the mouth and rants and raves’- may not be to everyone’s liking, Ockhuysen wrote, but it’s ‘a fundamental value that she is free to rant and rave as much as she likes’.  The government, Ockhuysen suggested, is kowtowing to Turkey because of its role in the refugee crisis: ‘it’s called the wages of fear.’

Dictator

In the Volkskrant columnist Bert Wagendorp also defends Umar’s right to ‘spout whatever she likes’. The reaction to this by the Turkish president has to be attributed to the fact that ‘like any dictator, Erdogan is quick-tempered and any attack not matter how futile is a threat. The greater the power, the greater the paranoia. Very often that leads to madness – we’ve seen examples of this in Europe and sometimes you can detect the first signs in Erdogan already.’

Elsevier published a withering attack on Turkey’s president by Afshin Ellian, who called  him ‘a sultan’ and his country ‘a banana republic’. The call off the Turkish embassy to denounce those who insult the president he condemned as ‘terrorism’.

And while he praised Rutte for defending Umar’s democratic rights, he is scathing about the reaction of two former Labour MPs of Turkish origin and other community leaders who are ‘behaving like a small outpost of Turkey in the Dutch parliament.’

‘The Dutch state isn’t threatening freedom. It is our freedom that is being threatened by enemies of freedom in society. What the Turks should do? Return to Atatürk, return to civilization,’ Ellias concluded.