The Netherlands, that country that so bravely pioneered movements such as gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana, seems on the brink of pioneering yet another: the official Islamization of Europe’s Parliaments.
That, anyway, would seem to be the wish of Tunahan Kuzu and Seleuk Ozturk, the founders of the country’s newest political party, which they established only a few days ago after splitting from the Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA), or Labor Party, in a dispute over Dutch Turkish organizations and the Dutch Turkish community at large. Although their party, Group Kuzu/Ozturk, has not yet been entirely defined, its creators describe it in sweeping terms as “the party the Netherlands longs for,” aimed at promoting “a society in which everyone is treated equally.”
Except that does not seem to be what they actually have in mind.
According to observations of former PvdA colleagues in local media reports , both Ozturk and Kuzu have shown clear antagonism towards women — ignoring even intimidating their female colleagues. More significantly, the two have also held tightly to their Turkish roots and Islamic faith, demanding, among other things, Islamic prayer spaces in the Parliament building – a clear violation of separation between church and state. (Those demands, it should be noted, were refused.)
And Ozturk, reported the national daily, Telegraaf, has regularly demonstrated a stronger allegiance to Turkey and to Islam than to the secular Dutch state he was elected to represent. On at least one occasion, for instance, he skipped a day of parliamentary voting, and explained his absence only the following day with the casual remark that, “Yesterday was a Muslim holiday.”
Ozturk, who defended the Turkish government’s violent backlash against protesters during the 2013 Gezi riots, has also demonstrated particularly strong support for Turkey’s Islamist president (and former prime minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan – again indicating a greater solidarity with Turkey – and its current regime – than with The Netherlands.
This should probably come as no great surprise: the Dutch Parliamentarian also holds ties to the Diyanet, Turkey’s office of religious affairs, (which, the Telegraaf reports, also provides funding for most of The Netherlands’ Turkish mosques). In fact, it was PvdA Social Affairs minister Lodewijk Asscher’s proposal to investigate the Dutch Diyanet connection (along with the activities of other Turkish conservative religious organizations in the Netherlands) that precipitated Ozturk’s and Kuzu’s defection from the party.