According to NRC Handelsblad the Netherlands are faced with a real diplomatic headache: Turkish military personnel that serve in various positions in Europe, mostly at NATO, seek asylum on a massive scale, with the Netherlands being among the countries of choice. The Turkish personnel are afraid that their government will arrest them as “Gulenists” as soon as they land on Turkish soil.
It should be noted that the majority of them were ordered to return but they disobeyed their orders.
This situation has brought the Dutch authorities facing the same dilemmas that the Greek courts faced a few weeks ago with the eight Turkish officers that had escaped to Greece with a military helicopter.
On another issue equally indicative of the path Turkey is following, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet chose not to publish an interview with the Nobel Prize winner author Orhan Pamuk with the excuse that he stated that he is against the upcoming changes in the county’s constitution that will empower Erdogan. On April there will be a referendum about these changes.

Pamuk was asked by the “platform against censorship ‘Susma’ (transl. Silence)” about the incident and he confirmed that he had given an interview were among other things he had explained why he wouldn’t vote in favor of the constitutional changes, but as he said, “sadly it wasn’t published”.
The newspaper Hurriyet has made no comments yet.
Many now argue that the incident is another case of “self-censorship”, something that happens more often since the failed coup against Erdogan last summer. The crackdown that followed and the numerous arrests of journalists have covered the freedom of the press with a cloak of fear and as some expert analysts say, we have seen nothing yet…