Turkey deports Dutch cows
While 40 Dutch cows have been expelled by Turkey and are on their way to the Netherlands, Turkish hackers attacked the Twitter accounts of international organizations and celebrities.
Turkey’s ongoing spat with the Netherlands is fast descending into the absurd. Members of Turkey’s Association of Red Meat Producers loaded 40 Dutch Holstein cows onto a truck and sent them packing to Holland to protest Dutch authorities' refusal to allow Turkish officials to campaign on Dutch soil for the constitutional referendum that would further empower Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Bulent Tunc, the association's president, told the mass circulation Hurriyet, “We sent a symbolic number of animals. If they [the Dutch] do not accept them, we will slaughter them and give away [the meat].”
In another burst of patriotism, Istanbul’s city council axed its “sister city protocol” with Rotterdam. The Dutch port city was host to much of the drama that unfolded over the weekend, with Dutch police clashing with Turkish protesters outside the Turkish Consulate on the evening of March 11. Turkish Family Affairs Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya, who arrived by car, was barred from entering the consulate and deported back to Germany.
The action against Rotterdam followed on orders from Erdogan, whose unremitting push to expand presidential powers will be put to a referendum on April 16. He told a rally in the western province of Afyon, “[I]t is impossible for us to be sister cities with such people.”
