Erdogan blames Dutch for Srebrenica massacre
Turkish president ratchets up diplomatic row with EU states ahead of referendum to increase his powers
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sharply escalated a diplomatic confrontation with the Netherlands, blaming the nation’s "corrupt" character for the 1995 massacre of thousands of Bosnians under the watch of a Dutch contingent of peacekeepers. "We know the Dutch from the Srebrenica massacre. We know how their character is corrupt from the massacre of 8,000 Bosnians," Erdogan said on Tuesday in a televised speech in Ankara. He spoke a day after Turkey announced it would bar the Dutch ambassador from re-entering the country in retaliation for the Netherlands’ decision to deny entry to Turkish ministers campaigning to expand Erdogan’s powers. The Srebrenica massacre — acknowledged by the UN as the deadliest such crime on European soil since the organization’s founding at the end of the Second World War — was perpetrated in July 1995 by Serb forces who rounded up thousands of Muslims, most of them men and boys. About 400 Dutch peacekeepers failed to prevent the atrocity in the ...
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