Key test for populists in Dutch polls
The Netherlands went to the polls on Wednesday, and it will be extremely interesting to see what effect its still escalating row with Turkey might have on a substantially undecided electorate, with an extraordinary 40 per cent of voters claiming not to have made up their minds just days before the election, and about 15 per cent expected to choose sides at the last minute.
One of the biggest questions is whether the Dutch citizens of Turkish origin will play into the hands of Geert Wilders, the limelight-hogging leader of the extreme right-wing Freedom Party (PVV) or persuade some potential PVV voters to stick with the status quo associated with centre-right Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy.
The Dutch election has attracted unprecedented attention as the first nationwide electoral exercise in a European nation following Brexit and the triumph of Donald Trump, with Wilders’ party until recently topping the opinion polls on the basis of a broadly anti-immigrant, specifically anti-Muslim and unequivocally anti-European Union (EU) agenda.
Until three decades or so ago, as in so many other European nations, the Dutch vote was mainly divided between the Christian and social democrats, with little to distinguish the centre-left from the centre-right, and even after the VVD popped up as a more popular — and more neoliberal — alternative to the Christian democrats, it has had little problem governing in coalition with the ostensibly social-democratic Labour Party.
But the times have been changing, and it is reasonable to assume that the Dutch authorities’ extraordinary measures to prevent Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s representatives from addressing rallies to garner support for a “yes” vote in Turkey’s constitutional referendum on April 16 were intended, in part, to avert the spectacle of large immigrant gatherings on the eve of the local election.
After his foreign minister was refused entry in the Netherlands and his family affairs minister was effectively expelled from there by being escorted to the German border, Erdogan accused the Dutch of being “Nazi remnants”, not long after using similarly offensive language in the German context following curbs on a rally by Angela Merkel’s government.
Inevitably, the German and Dutch governments have taken strong umbrage. Neither of them has deemed it politic to point out that far more potent parallels to the nasty dictatorship that emerged in Germany in the 1930s can be discerned in Turkey, whose President is likely to get away with a führer-ish power grab that would not only enhance his vast capacity to rule by diktat but potentially ensconce him at the helm until 2029.
Recent opinion polls suggest that the Turkish electorate is deeply divided, with at best a small majority willing to massage Erdogan’s massive ego. That would help explain why Erdogan is so desperate to win over the extensive Turkish diaspora — almost half of the three million-plus Turks in Germany, for instance, are entitled to vote in the referendum.
Winning the referendum would enable Erdogan to abolish the post of Prime Minister, preside over a Cabinet with less parliamentary oversight and call early elections. And one can understand why some nations might be reluctant to host his appeals for one-man rule — not least if they have been accused, as in the case of Germany, of allowing free rein to terrorists, a term that in official Turkish eyes applies to virtually all Kurds.
It will be alarming if Wilders emerges as the head of the largest party in the Netherlands, but his chances of rising to power remain minuscule.
On the other hand, a victory for Erdogan — even if he doesn’t sport a “Make Turkey great again” hat — would be tantamount to popular endorsement for a dictatorship. By arrangement with
Dawn