13 March 2017•Update: 15 March 2017
By Ismail Kaya
ADIYAMAN, Turkey
A storekeeper in southeast Turkey on Monday filed a criminal complaint against the king of the Netherlands and a host of officials over the treatment of Turkish ministers.
In a sign of the outrage felt by ordinary Turkish people over the bar on Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Family Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya, Mehmet Ozturk lodged the complaint with the Adiyaman Public Prosecutor’s Office.
“I felt disturbed as a Turkish citizen by the ugly assaults of the Netherlands against Minister Kaya, her convoy and her advisers,” Ozturk, who is from the small town of Kahta, told Anadolu Agency.
Kaya was deported after being blocked from attending a campaign event linked to the referendum on constitutional change in Turkey. After being stopped from entering the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam by Dutch police on Saturday evening she was driven to the German border.
In his complaint, Ozturk named King Willem-Alexander, Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk, Foreign Minister Bert Koenders and Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb, accusing them of insulting Turkey and violating the European Convention on Human Rights.
Meanwhile, a florist in neighboring Gaziantep declared a ban on the sale of Dutch flowers in his shop.
Salman Sertbas, from Islahiye near the Syrian border, said he would try to unite other Turkish florists against importing Dutch blooms.
In Edirne, a province bordering Greece and Bulgaria, the head of the local Milk Producers’ Union Mustafa Suicmez told reporters that there would be a block on using “Dutch-based diary products”.
