Turkey’s ambassador to The Hague appointed as president’s adviser

ANKARA

Turkish ambassador to the Netherlands, Sadık Arslan, was officially appointed as an adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on June 1, according to the Official Gazette.

Arslan has effectively been at the presidency for several months and was absent from the Netherlands in March when Turkish ministers were barred from speaking in Rotterdam in a row over campaigning among Turks living in the country.

Turkey will appoint a new ambassador to The Hague, but there is no timetable at the moment for such an assignment as the current tension between the countries could further delay the procedure. 


No ambassadors on duty in capitals

On March 11, the Dutch government first canceled Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu’s flight permit to the Netherlands and then blocked a convoy carrying Turkish Family Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya from entering the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam in Turkey’s latest argument with an EU ally.

Kaya was escorted by Dutch police to Germany after she was warned she would be declared “persona non grata” amid a police intervention against Turks who gathered in front of the consulate building in Rotterdam.

An apology from the Netherlands will not be enough to normalize relations, Çavuşoğlu said March 12, adding that the country’s actions would have consequences.

He also reiterated that the Dutch ambassador to Turkey, Cornelis van Rij, could not re-enter Turkey.

“To begin with, this will have a response. Apologizing is not enough. We have begun to give a response and said the ambassador should not come to the country and he cannot. We will take steps and then the Netherlands will apologize. Otherwise, we will continue to take these steps,” Çavuşoğlu said.

Van Rij, who was abroad during the crisis in Rotterdam in March, has not entered Turkey since then.

As such, the countries do not have respective ambassadors serving in each other’s capitals.