As tensions simmer between the Netherlands and Turkey over the mistreatment of a Turkish minister in Rotterdam last week, Turks vented their fury in the European country in peculiar ways. A man offered to slaughter his cow, a Dutch import, in retaliation, while a group of protesters brought their intimidating kangal dogs to a rally outside the Dutch consulate in Istanbul.
Dutch authorities sparked fury in Turkey after they unleashed police dogs on a crowd denouncing the mistreatment of Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya. The deportation of Kaya, who was barred from meeting members of the Turkish community in the city, further escalated tensions with Turkey, which is planning to downgrade ties.
Brutal images of police dogs biting a protester and Rotterdam police roughly handling the group protesting the ban on Kaya have angered the Turkish public who have held sporadic protests outside the Dutch missions since last week. Apart from absurd forms of protest such as a group of demonstrators squeezing and stabbing oranges, which symbolize the Netherlands, Turks mostly respond with sensible reactions such as filing lawsuits against the Dutch authorities.
A Tuesday night demonstration by a group who brought their kangals (a guardian dog native to Turkey), meanwhile, was probably the most meaningful among the protests. Demonstrators did not shout any slogans but simply stood outside with dogs whose sheer size would be enough to intimidate police dogs forced upon protesters in Rotterdam.
The damage has already been done to Turkish-Dutch relations due to the relentless stance of the country against Turkey but an innocent cow may also fall victim to the row. Hüseyin Avni Sipahi, a member of a district council in Beşiktaş, which lies a few kilometers from the Dutch consulate, pledged to slaughter a cow he imported from the Netherlands on his farm in retaliation. "It is hard to stomach the deportation of our minister. I have a cow in my farm and it is very fertile but I decided to slaughter it," he said while the council's president, he and other council members would gladly feast upon the meat of the slaughtered cow. Beşiktaş mayor, however, asked Sipahi to retract his statement. "Dear brother, please do not cut even a hair of that cow for the fascist policy of the Netherlands," he said in a social media post.
