The Netherlands won’t cooperate if Turkey wants to take Dutch cartoonist to court

Netherlands and Turkey flag pins

The Netherlands will not cooperate with any eventual request by Turkey for the extradition of a Dutch cartoonist, justice minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus told MPs on Tuesday.

Cartoonist Ruben L Oppenheimer is under fire over a drawing featuring Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan having sex with the bird from the Twitter symbol and the slogan ‘Erdogan is not a goatfucker’. Dutch populists use the term to describe orthodox Muslims.

A Turkish court has issued a court order calling on Twitter to remove the drawings from its social media network.

Grapperhaus told MPs that freedom of speech is guaranteed in the Netherlands by the European human rights treaty. In addition, it is up to the US authorities to determine if the cartoon should be removed, because Twitter is an American company, he said.

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