Hate speech in Netherlands and Turkey

Joost Lagendijk

A few days after the local elections in the Netherlands that were held last Wednesday, the debate is not dominated by the countrywide landslide victory of the progressive liberals or the historic defeat of the Social Democrats in Amsterdam and other big cities. The talk of the town are the racist chants against Moroccans by Geert Wilders, the populist leader of the extreme-right Freedom Party. Over the years, Wilders has gained himself a reputation as a committed Islamophobe who takes pleasure in trying to find out how far he can go in stretching the limits of free speech. According to many politicians and commentators, he crossed the line on election night when he spoke to a crowd of supporters at The Hague and asked them, "Do you want more or fewer Moroccans in this city?" They chanted "Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!" Wilders smiled and responded "I will take care of that."

Wilders' anti-Moroccan rhetoric is nothing new, but never before have the condemnatory reactions been so strong and widely supported. The deputy editor-in-chief of a major television network known for its editorial neutrality published an open letter telling Wilders: "Shame on you." The Association for Dutch Moroccans, representing over 350,000 people of Moroccan origin in the Netherlands, announced it would file charges of discrimination against Wilders and, one day after his widely-discussed remarks, more than 100 people had already requested prosecutors to investigate him for hate-speech.

I sincerely hope Wilders will be prosecuted and punished for hate crimes because he has crossed the thin line between freedom of speech and incitement to hatred or violence. Unfortunately, Wilders was acquitted in 2011 for similar, albeit slightly less rude statements.

I am sure a lot of Turks are therefore looking with some suspicion at the current case and are curious whether this time around Dutch judges are willing to draw the line and make it clear hate speech is not covered by the freedom of expression. I am also convinced that, if Wilders walks away once more, many people in Turkey and elsewhere will see that acquittal as further proof of deeply rooted and persistent racism in Europe. To be honest, I would not blame them.

My problem is with those Turks who want Wilders to be sentenced but, at the same time, turn a blind eye to extreme examples of hate speech in Turkey. Again, I agree Wilders went too far by discriminating against a whole group of Dutch citizens and that is why he should be penalized. But what about the words used by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to describe the followers of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen? To bring up just a few examples: assassins, traitors, viruses, evil, mafia.

One can and should blame Mr. Wilders for many things. But even he has never labeled people he dislikes or hates in the terms regularly used by the leader of the ruling party in Turkey.

Let me remind those who object to this comparison that not only incitement to hatred by someone of one (religious) group directed at members of another (religious) group should be condemned as hate speech. Also members of the same (religious) group should be charged with hate speech if they, publicly and repeatedly, refer to some of their co-religionists in an extremely malicious way that might invite others to use violence against those targeted.

Hate speech laws are a tricky thing, especially in countries like Turkey with little or no legacy of tolerance for religious and ethnic multiformity, because they can easily be used to put unjust restrictions on freedom of expression. Still, I prefer hate speech legislation to blasphemy laws or rules and regulations to protect the ideological heritage of one particular person.

Such bills, however, will only be effective and respected by most citizens, both in the Netherlands and in Turkey, if they are applied, first and foremost, to political leaders who use exceptionally insulting and provocative language. It would also help if everybody would realize how silly it is to see the mote in one's brother's eye but not the beam in one's own.

Published on Today's Zaman, 22 March 2014, Saturday