Brussels Journal, Belgium
Oct 13 2006
Belgian and Dutch Parties Try to Put Genie Back in the Bottle
>From the desk of Paul Belien on Thu, 2006-10-12 22:49
Belgium introduced voting rights for non-Belgian residents in order
to counter the `islamophobic’ and Flemish secessionist Vlaams Belang
(VB). As a result multitudes of Muslim candidates were elected in
major cities in last Sunday’s local elections. In Antwerp the
immigrants are now demanding an alderman’s post in the city
government, which consists of the mayor and ten aldermen. In Brussels
the Parti Socialiste (PS) is embarrassed at the election of Murat
Denizli as a Socialist councilor. Denizli is a hardright Turkish
extremist belonging to the Grey Wolves. In the Netherlands political
parties are facing serious problems with Turkish candidates who
refuse to acknowledge the 1915 Armenian genocide.
In Antwerp all the mainstream parties have (again) teamed up in a
coalition in order to keep the VB out of local government. In 1989
the Belgian parties signed an agreement – the so-called `cordon
sanitaire’ – that, no matter what the outcome of the elections may
be, they will never enter into a coalition with the VB. The VB has 20
of the 55 seats in the new Antwerp city council. The new governing
coalition of Socialists, Christian-Democrats and Liberals holds 33
seats. Of the latter 9 seats are held by Muslims (7 Socialists and 2
Christian-Dems), which gives them real vetoing power within the new
coalition. The most popular candidate on the Socialist list of mayor
Patrick Janssens is Fauzaya Talhaoui. She got more votes than any
other candidate apart from Janssens himself. Talhaoui wants to become
a city alderman, but her demand is posing problems for the mayor, who
had already promised the position of alderman to other politicians
before the elections.
Yesterday the Brussels newspaper Le Soir ran a front page article
about the problems in the important Brussels borough of Schaarbeek.
The paper says it had been widely known for three months that a
member of the Turkish Grey Wolves was a Socialist candidate there.
(It should be noted, however, that Le Soir, the largest paper in
Brussels, failed to disclose this to its readers until yesterday,
well after the elections.) The election of Murat Denizli, Le Soir
says, has led to `open warfare and an identity crisis’ within the PS
because the Grey Wolves are know to be `ultra-nationalist, racist,
anti-European.’
Denizli was introduced on the PS list by the Schaarbeek PS leader
Laurette Onkelinx, who is also the Belgian vice prime minister and
minister of Justice. Schaarbeek PS members told Le Soir that last
April the local section of the PS had rejected the list of candidates
which included Denizli and `other immigrants adhering to rather
religious and conservative Muslim values.’ Onkelinx, however,
demanded that the candidates be accepted because `they are popular
and the party had to win the elections at any price.’ Today it
bothers many traditional indigenous Socialists who failed to get
elected that the party sold out to the immigrant hard-right and the
Islamists. `The end justified the means,’ one of them told Le Soir.
They are condemning a multilingual electoral campaign which was
conducted partly in Turkish and Arab and during which Socialists
visited mosques to attract voters and held `ambiguous speeches
denying the Armenian genocide.’ `Whenever one of the Belgo-Belgians
[the indigenous Belgians] complained he was told off for being a
racist.’
In the Netherlands general elections are due on 22 November. Since
the Muslim vote tipped the balance in favour of the Socialists in
last March’s local elections, both the Socialists, currently in
opposition, and the governing Christian-Democrats are putting forward
dozens of Muslim candidates. However, when Wouter Bos, the Socialist
leader, removed the Turkish candidate Erdinc Sacan from the list
after the latter had denied the Armenian genocide of 1915 in a
Turkish newspaper (a Turkish paper in Turkey that is) this led to an
outcry both in Turkey and among Turks in the Netherlands.
The Dutch Christian-Democrats removed two Turkish candidates, Osman
Elmaci and Ayhan Tonca, from their list for the same reason,
eliciting another outcry from Amsterdam to Ankara. Last week the
Dutch newspaper NRC-Handelsblad commented that the parties `are
frantically trying to put the genie back in the bottle.’
The Socialists are nervous because the position of Bos’s running
mate, Nehabat Albayrak, on the matter of the Armenian genocide is not
clear. Albayrak, who already is a member of the Dutch Parliament,
refuses to comment on the issue. Nihat Eski, another Dutch
parliamentarian of Turkish origin, though he sits for the
Christian-Democrats, is being called a traitor by many Turkish voters
for saying that he thinks the 1915 genocide is a historical fact.
In Belgium Emir Kir, a leading Socialist politician of Turkish origin
and the Brussels secretary of state for monuments, is campaigning for
the demolition of the Brussels monument that commemorates the
genocide of the Armenians.