Around one in three Dutch Turks voted in this weekend’s presidential elections in Turkey, but of those that did, almost 73% of the votes went to sitting president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AD said on Monday, quoting Turkish paper dailysabah.com.

Of the 260,000 Dutch Turks eligible to vote, just 84,500 actually did so at one of the three polling stations set up round the country, the AD said.

Of those votes, 60,800 went to Erdogan and 12,300 to his main rival Muharrem Ince.  The rest went to other candidates or were spoiled. In Turkey itself, the turnout was some 87%, with 52% voting for Erdogan.

However, it is unclear just how many Dutch Turks actually voted. A report on website Nu.nl last week indicated a higher turnout among Dutch Turks but that was based on reports from the polling stations themselves.

And the Volkskrant quoted Turkish newspaper Hürriyet which said over 45% of Dutch Turks had actually voted. In addition, Dutch broadcaster NOS, also quoting Sabah on Monday afternoon, put the turnout in the Netherlands at just over 40%, a far higher proportion than the AD.

Celebrations

Thousands of Dutch Turks took to the streets on Sunday night to celebrate Erdogan’s victory, leading to a storm of comments on social media and from right-wing politicians.

‘Neighbourhood angry about partying Turkish; bugger off home,’ was the headline in Monday’s Telegraaf, which interviewed Dutch Turkish writer Yesim Candan about the celebrations.

‘I watched in astonishment,’ he told the paper. ‘There were a lot of police, traffic was disrupted. “This is not necessary”, I thought to myself.’

‘In Turkey people think it is ridiculous that people in the Netherlands have a vote,’ he said.

😂😂😂 Astonishing total invasion-Amsterdam and Rotterdam taken over by turks-headline in dutch telegraph. Partying turks in Holland take over the streets because og Turkish politics. https://t.co/uIf1VFSpBy

— basboon (@basboon007) June 25, 2018