"How others see us
I write this from Amsterdam, where I have participated in a “town hall” meeting as a guest of the Netherlands-based Turkey Institute. This is an organization curiously inspired by a German institute whose mission was to tackle the legacy of resentment in Holland from World War II. It now attempts to promote an understanding of Turkey and (although this is more subtext than formal part of its brief) to present a more reasoned picture of an EU aspirant nation which is all too often seen through the filter of a large immigrant population. The Turkish community is around 380,000 and is only slowly taking its place in Dutch society. This paradoxically, I learn, protects it from the criticism and prejudice. It is disaffected young Moroccan men who monopolize the attention of the media. Turks remain strangely invisible."
More:SUNDAY'S ZAMAN
