Netherlands: Why the Turks are so easily insulted

last updated 8 January 2015

Marc Guillet and Axel Veldhuijzen

Algemeen Dagblad

The Dutch have apparently offended Turkey, said Marc Guillet and Axel Veldhuijzen. Dutch authorities investigating last week’s deadly crash of a Turkish Airlines flight trying to land at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport blamed a technical problem with the plane, compounded by pilot error. Nine people died in the accident. Turkey is taking these findings as a national insult. “Everyone’s guilty except the Dutch,” declared a headline in the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet. Such a reaction is typical of Turkey, a “much more nationalist country” than the Netherlands. For a Turkish pilot to make an error resulting in a fatal crash “is a national disgrace.” That’s why Turkey continues to insist that Dutch air traffic controllers must have erred in guiding the plane. Perhaps we should have expected this defensiveness. Back in 2005, when the Netherlands—along with France, Switzerland, and Germany—refused to let Turkish airline Onur Air use its airports because of the airline’s poor safety record, Turkey called the ban “a European conspiracy against Turkey.” What a shame that this latest accident is becoming the subject of another “unpleasant shouting match” between our two countries.